


but what will you do when you're sober?

by nessatheresa12121



Series: My Hevelyn fics [1]
Category: Incredibles (Pixar Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Slow Burn, fic takes place over one night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-18
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-08-25 09:26:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 33,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16658525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nessatheresa12121/pseuds/nessatheresa12121
Summary: Caring is not an option. She has to pretend to not give a shit, to be full of disdain and carelessness and nothing else. Because she knows if Helen finds a crack in that armor, she’s gonna dig her fingers in and pull it apart.(Warning for discussions of suicide and self-harm.)





	1. Played it so nonchalant

“You have to eat.”

She looks up at the tall, slim figure of her brother. As usual, immaculately-dressed, wearing a blue suit the likes of which a common man couldn’t afford with two years’ salary. But Evelyn and Winston weren’t raised to think other people were beneath them, though, with their Deavor riches, it would have been easy enough to fall into that mindset. Their parents hadn’t allowed it. They’d raised their children to be decent, humble, down-to-earth folks. Just as they were.

Her parents had been good people. So good that she sometimes wonders how _she_ had ever burst forth from their pristine loins. And there are times when she blames her brother for their deaths, casts guilt onto him because it’s easier than believing in an uncaring, random universe. After all, wasn’t it Winston who had encouraged her father in their mutual love for supers? Evelyn had had no part in that. She’d never fallen for the ruse. And in the end, it was a belief in the infallibility of supers that had slaughtered her father and mother.

She stares up at her brother and says, childishly, “Make me, then.”

Winston shakes his head, frowning. She guesses what he’s thinking. He fought so hard to secure her early release, for what? So that she could starve herself to death?

“What is this, a hunger strike? Simple petulance? For god’s sake, is it _nausea?_ Can you tell me what’s come over you that you haven’t eaten in two days?”

“That’s an exaggeration, Win,” she sighs, as though her brother is being the unreasonable one here. “It’s only been forty hours.”

“That doesn’t exactly make it all right,” he points out, worry lines starting to erase the annoyance on his lined face. She hasn’t thought about it in recent years—she’s been too busy crafting and polishing her master plan (though she evidently didn’t take quite long enough)—but Winston has grown old. They both have. His face is etched with wrinkles. Crow’s feet, born of laughter. Worry lines between his eyebrows. Gray streaked through his hair.

He looks so much like their father that sometimes, the pain and anger make her forget how to breathe.

She wonders if he looks at her and sees their mother, and forgets how to breathe, too. It would serve him right.

Oh, there’s that damn blame, again. Like a parasite, searching for someone to suck on.

He’s lecturing her again, shaking his finger like she’s a naughty child who just doesn’t get it. “Look, I don’t want to have to send a bunch of burly guys in here to force steak down your throat, but if that’s how it’s gotta be, then that’s how it’s gotta be.”

“Are you joking?” It’s an honest question.

“Am I—of course I’m joking. Evelyn.” His lips press together. “You don’t really think I’d send guys in here to force feed you.”

She shrugs, leaning back sideways in her leather chair with both legs draped over its arm. She doesn’t offer a verbal response. Inside, Evelyn is kind of annoyed with herself. She really _didn’t_ know whether her brother was joking, whether things had gone that far yet or not. She used to be able to read Winston like an open book, like one of her voluminous tech manuals with their never-ending blueprints and diagrams. But now…

Her brother exhales, expelling his ghosts. “Ev, I’m not gonna make you do anything you don’t want. That includes eating. You’re an adult. You can make your own choices. But I’m _worried_ about you. I want to know why you’re not touching any of the food in your fridge.”

Despite herself she feels a pang of hurt that Winston is worrying over her. He shouldn’t be. But she just offers him another shrug. “Not hungry.”

Winston plants his hands firmly on his hips and sighs again, casting an idle glance around the room. It’s Evelyn’s penthouse apartment, one of her two homes. Unlike Winston, she doesn’t need to own two hundred million dollars worth of properties. Two, a smaller penthouse and a large mansion she barely visits and only owns out of obligation, are all Evelyn has to call her own. And now, her world has shrunk down to the size of her penthouse, as she’s been ordered to serve two years of house arrest in this space. They’re in the living room now, white-carpeted and white-walled, sparsely decorated, almost Spartan, as Evelyn isn’t one for comfort.

Winston’s gaze falls back onto Evelyn, and she can see he’s been thinking. His eyebrows crinkle, a slight frown. “The door…” he mutters.

“What? You gotta speak up.”

“The door!” he exclaims, looking betrayed. “You’re going on a crash diet so you can fit through the bars!”

Her front door has indeed been locked down behind a second door of iron bars, and only Uncle Sam holds the key; Winston, and all other visitors, must make a special request for the key at least 24 hours in advance before they can enter her home. But the bars… Evelyn must admit, she _had_ noticed they were spaced pretty far apart. Far enough apart for a very slim person to squeeze past…

Of course, if she does manage to slim down enough to slip through the bars, the alarm on her ankle monitor would be triggered within milliseconds. But the dream’s still there. And even if that dream fails, there’s still the pleasant side effect that her crash diet might kill her.

Escape is a distant, stupid dream, one that she isn’t sure she’s even _really_ hoping for.

She gives her brother a cheeky, hood-eyed look. “I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity of that statement.”

“Oh, come on, Ev. It’s as plain as day.” His reaction hits her in the gut: not anger, but disappointment and incredulity. He actually expected _better_ from her. From _her_. He should have learned by now that she will always disappoint him.

She wants to snap at him, wants to tell him this, wants to tell him he’s got no right to be disappointed, no right to expect the best from her. She holds herself back, though, because Evelyn Deavor still has a shred of humanity—she likes to think—inside that coal-blackened soul, and she knows her brother doesn’t deserve to be kicked while he’s down. Doesn’t deserve to be kicked at all, actually.

“Yeah, you’re right, Winston,” she says. “You’re right. That was my plan. It was a stupid plan, and it never would’ve worked, so…” She throws up her hands. “I’m glad you caught me, I guess. What’re you gonna do now, contact the jailhouse, ask ’em to reinforce the bars? I wouldn’t blame you.”

He withdraws slightly, as though offended. “What? No. Evelyn, I wouldn’t do that.”

Evelyn’s eyes widen. “Oh, so what, you _want_ me to escape?” She can’t help provoking her brother. Just a little.

“No! I just—I—Jesus.” He lowers his face into his palm, frustrated. “I want you to be happy. That’s all I want. And I just don’t see how you can be happy if you are _starving_ , Evelyn. Please, could you just forget this silly plan and focus on what matters?”

What matters. Rehabilitating her image. Rehabilitating DevTech. Taking her punishment contritely, serving her due time, being penitent. Fading away from the public eye so that Winston doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of having a terrorist for a sister any longer.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters. “What matters.”

“So.” He claps his hands together, giving her a tight but flashy smile. Back to the old Winston. “You gonna have lunch with me, or what?”

“If you’re buying,” she jokes flatly, finger-gun pointing at him. That’s quite a funny joke, seeing how she can’t leave her home.

The joke misses Winston. “Sure, I’ll buy. There’s a great deli down the street that does delivery. You want a sandwich?”

She imagines the face of a poor deli delivery guy, bringing his wares to a penthouse suite with a barred door. “Sure. Delivery sounds great. Do I get to look at a menu first?”

 

The delivery comes and goes. Evelyn doesn’t get to see the delivery guy’s face, because Winston is the one who goes to the door and fetches their meal. But from the dining room, she hears Winston’s genial voice thanking the deliverer, and then some incomprehensible stuttering from the person on the other side, and a firm “No, you keep it! I insist—it’s for you!” from Winston.

The door shuts and Winston returns, holding up a folded paper bag like an offering. “I bring food.”

Splayed across a minimalist chair at her dining room table, Evelyn raises one eyebrow at her brother. “What did you do to that poor guy? Another ten-thousand-dollar tip?”

“ _Five_ thousand dollars this time,” Winston amends cheerfully as he sits across from her, sliding the paper bag in her direction.

She rolls her eyes, offering a bit of advice she knows he won’t take. “Winston, you’re forty, I shouldn’t have to tell you this. You cannot just carry around that kind of cash.”

“Well, I just never know when I’m going to be feeling generous.”

“Psh. You already give millions to charity every year. What more do you have to be generous about?”

“Well, Ev, I don’t know who raised you, but _my_ parents taught me that we have much more money than we deserve, and the best thing we can do is give lots of it away to others. I can afford to make people’s days a little better. Why shouldn’t I?”

 _And it’s good PR, don’t forget that_. She bites back this response, but she knows it’s more than fair: everything Winston does is centered around making a good impression on people. About DevTech. About himself.

She doesn’t know why she’s so mean to him in her head, even if everything she thinks is true. He’s been so good to her in the past months, better than she deserves, even after all she did to him. And she knows his kindness to her—and his refusal to publicly disown her—has cost him, more than he’ll admit; it’s not as though she hasn’t been watching the news, and she’s seen DevTech’s numbers plunge precipitously since her arrest. The people think Evelyn is a terrorist, and their trust in DevTech has been shaken, and shaken badly. Winston could have remedied that by distancing himself as far away from his sister as possible, by severing ties, by allowing her to rot in prison instead of fighting hard for a lenient sentence.

But he didn’t.

She snaps her fingers. “Plates. We need plates.”

“Right. Don’t wanna get crumbs on the table, huh? We’re not savages.”

“I’ll fetch them. I need the exercise, anyway.” She gets up and heads for the nearby kitchenette (her penthouse also has a full kitchen, but it’s next to her _other_ dining room, on the other side of this gigantic apartment). Truth be told, she couldn’t care less if crumbs get anywhere. This was just an excuse to open her fridge, grab the half-empty bottle of white wine that’s sitting temptingly on the top shelf, and take a long, long, long swig that just never seems to end. Her thoughts are buzzing too fast, and she wants to drown them all, wants to be numb, no matter if that’s a cliché or not.  

As she swallows down her last fruity gulp and sets the bottle back onto the shelf, she sees Winston standing in the entrance to the kitchenette, staring hard at her. “You’re not supposed to drink on an empty stomach,” is all he says.

She knows he’s angry, because she promised him she would stop drinking. But sometimes, Evelyn Deavor breaks her promises. She has promised Winston things before, and those things didn’t come true, either.

But her biggest lie has always been the one she’s about to tell next, for the millionth time.

“I’m fine,” she says. “Don’t worry about me.”

“How can I not?” But after staring sadly at her for a few more moments, Winston just sighs and retreats back to the dining room. She hears the rustle of paper as he retrieves his ham-and-swiss-cheese sandwich and begins to munch.

Her own stomach growls. She resists the urge to slap it.

She finally allows herself to admit that she was never gonna fit through those bars. She hadn’t exactly been a fatso before all this happened; she’s always been slender. But by the time she entered her penthouse apartment a free woman for the first time in months, after spending six months behind bars, Evelyn had lost twenty pounds from shitty prison food, leaving her at her skinniest weight since her teen years. If she wasn’t going to fit through the bars at _that_ size, it was never going to happen.

At this point, losing more weight would just be suicide.

And she knows that.

Evelyn is not the kind of person who halfasses things. At least, not before this. Before this, if she’d wanted to kill herself—really wanted it—she would have _done_ it, in a way that would not leave any chance for her to be discovered and revived. But now, she’s suiciding in passive ways. Rejecting food until her stomach is ready to collapse with the ache. Drinking until she can’t feel the passage of time. Running a bath and holding her breath underwater, drunk as a skunk, and hoping she’ll pass out before she gets the undeniable urge to heave a breath.  

Why? Because at this point, real suicide is a coward’s way out. Because after her death, Winston will be able to convince himself that it was an accident, not suicide, and thus he won’t feel _quite_ so terrible about the whole thing. Because she’s taunting the universe, begging it to show her that she’s still got a reason to be here, leaving her fate to the powers of chance. If her body is strong enough to hold onto life, then why should she deny it the chance, right?

But if it’s not…

Let nature take it course.

She won’t join Winston in the dining room for her meal, not yet. She’ll wait a little longer. She’s already feeling the buzz.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to explore what Evelyn's life would look like after she was arrested. My answer: not very nice. She's struggling with a lot of guilt and resentment and reassessment of her core values and all that great stuff. Lots of angst forthcoming.
> 
> I'm planning to write further chapters where Helen shows up, so that'll be fun. Stay tuned if you like Hevelyn. Thanks for reading my work.
> 
> All chapter titles come from “Sober” and “Sober II (Melodrama)” by Lorde.


	2. And the treason...

“Don’t you have a meeting to get back to?” she asks her brother dryly. “Or something?”

Winston is sprawled across a white couch in her living room, face buried in some business magazine or other that he’s brought along with him. She’s sitting perpendicular to him in a cream-colored chair, eyes lazily blinking at the ceiling above her.

He glances at her. “Hmm? Oh, nope. It’s Saturday.”

Is it really? She hasn’t been keeping track of time. For all she knew, it was Tuesday. Or any other day of the week.

They sit quietly for another few minutes. They don’t have an awful lot to talk about, Winston and her. Winston avoids most subjects, and Evelyn avoids the rest. And they end up just sitting around with silence filling up the space. It’s not as if Evelyn has a television or a radio she could turn on, either—thanks to the terms of her sentence, her home is strictly tech-free. She has lightbulbs and a fridge, and not much else. Nothing she could fashion into an escape method, nothing she could wire into a makeshift pair of hypnosis goggles. Nothing _entertaining_.

In the nights, when she sits in the dark plagued with insomnia and unable to close her eyes, Evelyn is perfectly willing to denounce all that Screenslaver bullshit, all that crap about how screens are the devil. She just wishes she had a TV. Anything to take her mind away from… well, from everything.

Anyway, it wasn’t the _screens_ she hated. That was a cover-up. Anybody who doesn’t know that by now hasn’t been paying very close attention.

With these minds running through her head, she turns her attention to Winston yet again. “Sorry I can’t offer you any entertainment. It’s just, you know…”

He waves a dismissive hand. “It’s no problem, you know that. I’m fine.”

He _is_ fine, perfectly happy to just sit with her and read his magazines. Day after day, he visits her religiously: each weeknight after work—though what does “after work” mean to a workaholic like Winston?—and on the weekend, too. It’s lucky for her that Winston pays visits, too, because god knows nobody else would. She doesn’t _have_ anyone else. Her former circle of acquaintances have quickly abandoned her, and even her most loyal friend—Betsy, who she’s known since childhood—has gone AWOL since Evelyn’s arrest.

She can’t blame a single one of them, though, especially not Betsy. She still remembers the look on her brunette friend’s face when Evelyn asked Betsy to have her seven-year-old daughter hold up a sign reading: _Screenslaver is still out there_. Just to unnerve Elastigirl. Because Evelyn liked playing with Elastigirl more than anyone else.

Betsy had scrunched up her nose in confusion and distaste, but ultimately she’d obeyed Evelyn’s request. And now, she’s likely feeling a whole new wave of shock and disgust upon learning, along with the rest of the world, who Evelyn truly is.

There are some very good reasons why Evelyn Deavor no longer has anyone she can call a friend. Violent criminals tend to experience that circumstance, after all. She only has her brother. Only him, in all the world. And really, hasn’t that _always_ been how it is?

She’s glad of Winston’s company; she’s lucky to have him. Lucky he’s still his same old self around her, instead of treating her with distrust, annoyance, hatred, pity.

Well, okay, only a little bit of pity.

Her brother is folding up his magazine and clearing his throat. “Well, it’s five o’clock. That’s about it for me.”

“You’re gonna head out?” She raises an eyebrow. “Got any big plans for tonight?”

“Yup. A night on the town with some high-profile foreign investors.”

“Thought you said you didn’t have any meetings.”

“I don’t,” he protests. “This isn’t a meeting. It’s a _night on the town_. There’s a difference.”

“Hmm,” she scoffs, not buying it. For Winston, even fun is just work disguised as fun.

“Evelyn…” Her brother looks troubled now, and she can tell he’s got something on his mind, something he doesn’t want to share. “Look, before I go, I’ve got to tell you something.”

She folds her arms tight. “Spill.”

“Er…” She can picture him pulling at his collar, he looks so nervous and twitchy. “It’s a little delicate, but do you promise you won’t go nuclear on me?”

“Spit it out,” she says suspiciously. “I’m not making any promises.”

“Okay, fine. I may have invited a guest over here. For your enrichment.”

“For my _enrichment?_ ” Already, she’s on-edge at the idea of this mysterious “guest” being in her home. In her current state, it’s exhausting enough just socializing with her brother, but somebody else? An uninvited intruder?

Winston lifts his palms in defense against her incredulous tone. “Look, I only want to help you. I know you’re lonely and you feel caged. I think having some company around might change that, but I can’t be here all the time. And this person…” He hesitates. “…I think this person can help you better than I can, to be honest.”

She’s leaning forward so far, she’s almost bent over at the waist, both feet firmly planted on the ground, which is a rarity for Evelyn when she’s sitting in a chair. She knows her expression hasn’t changed from its previous lazy disinterest, but she also knows that Winston knows that she’s pissed.

“And who exactly is this mystery guest I’m expected to entertain?”

“It’s not an expectation, Evelyn, you can cut the visit off at any time.”

“Cool, Winston, but that’s not the question I asked you.”

For a moment it’s a standoff, the two siblings staring at each other, and then finally Winston says, “It’s Helen Parr.”

She doesn’t recognize the name. “Who?”

He winces, as though the question has physically struck him. “Uh, a family friend. Just trust me, Ev.”

“Huh. I guess this Helen is a friend of _your_ side of the family,” she deadpans. “’Cos I have no idea who in the hell that is.”

“Trust me,” Winston repeats, looking frazzled.

“All right.” She throws up her hands. “I trust you. Just tell me one thing. She’s not a therapist, is she?”

Her brother looks surprised, then laughs. “No, she’s not a therapist. I wouldn’t do that to you. Not without your consent, anyhow.”

“Consent. Huh. There’s a shortage of that going around, isn’t there? I don’t seem to recall _consenting_ for you to invite random guests over.”

Now he’s guilty. “Sorry, Ev. I should’ve asked. It’s just that…”

The doorbell rings.

“…if I’d have asked you, you’d never have said yes,” he admits.

Evelyn blinks, then her eyes narrow. Something about this goes beyond the surface story: that Winston has invited over a heretofore-unknown family friend over to keep Evelyn company. No, there’s something larger at work here. Something that Winston feels far guiltier about than he should.

“Winston, just what exactly am I going to be ambushed with when I open that door?” she asks pointedly.

He’s already risen to his feet and is starting to head off towards the front door. “Trust me,” he repeats yet again.

Her eyes narrow further as she watches her brother retreat from the living room.

From a distance, she hears the front door open, the creak of the second metal door being pushed aside. And she hears distant voices, quiet and hushed—one her brother’s; one female, familiar but not immediately identifiable, low as it is. The mysterious Helen.

It gives Evelyn a strange shiver up her spine: to _know_ that she knows this voice, but not be able to know from _where_. Like an intense déjà vu.

The voices quiet, and footsteps approach. Winston appears in the doorframe to the living room. There’s a figure behind him. At first, Evelyn can’t see her face.

Then, the woman steps out from behind Winston, crossing her arms hard and regarding Evelyn with stony brown eyes.

Oh.

It’s her.

For a moment Evelyn can’t feel anything in reaction, just a dull recognition as her brain sorts out the unique pattern—eyes, hair, lips, heart-shaped face—that makes up Elastigirl, the woman who brought Evelyn down. She’s never seen the hero without her mask, but it’s easy enough to recognize her. Who else has that sweeping red hair? Who else would look at Evelyn like _that_ , like she wants to rip her apart and throw her to a pack of starving lions?

The look on Elastigirl’s face ends Evelyn’s numbness. She snaps back to reality.

Winston opens his mouth, but Evelyn leaves him no time for introductions. “Hey, Win? Can I talk to you in private for a moment?” she says, casually enough.

Winston does not look particularly pleased—especially when he glances over at Elastigirl and sees the expression on her face—but he complies, giving Elastigirl a brief nod and smile before heading over to Evelyn. She grasps him by his arm, his suit cellophane-y under her skin, and almost drags him to an adjoining room, her second kitchen.

Out of earshot of Elastigirl in the dark kitchen, they are two dark silhouettes bent toward each other, and she hisses fiercely at him, “ _What in the name of god possessed you to think this was a good idea?_ ” Even Evelyn is surprised at the sheer force of her own anger, but of course, it’s augmented by other emotions. Emotions she’d hoped her white wine habit would’ve broken by now.

Winston is flustered. “Look, I—I’m sorry. She contacted me, said she wanted to see you.”

“ _She_ said she wanted to see _me?_ ” Evelyn has no idea how this makes her feel, no name for this particular emotion, but she does know it comes with a hefty dose of nausea.

“Yes. Is that so hard to believe? You two were friends.”

“…before I tried to kidnap her children and kill her and her husband and disgrace their family name for all eternity, yeah, we might’ve been buddies,” she sarcastically snaps at him, her lips curving into a sneer. “Did you not see the look on that woman’s face? She _hates_ me. She’s here to settle a score, Winston. If you leave us alone, you’ll come back in the morning and I’ll be a stiff in the corner. She’ll strangle me like a goddamn python.”

And she _does_ fear Elastigirl, come to think of it. There, that’s an emotion she can name: terror. Winston is going to leave Evelyn locked in an apartment with a superpowered woman who—with good reason—utterly despises Evelyn and everything she stands for. Yeah, Evelyn’s life might just be in danger tonight.

But even as she thinks about this possibility, her fear leaves her—well, most of it. Yeah, she can picture Elastigirl beating her up, leaving her with a black eye and a few bruised ribs for her crimes, but _killing_ her? Nah. That’s not Elastigirl’s style. Not remotely.

Still, though, Evelyn would rather not have those bruised ribs.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Winston objects. “I absolutely did not get the impression that she wanted to kill or hurt you. She just has some questions. And I think you, of all people, can understand that.” He places a hand on her shoulder. “You’re empathetic, Evelyn, whether you want to admit it or not, and you know that Helen has some pretty complex feelings about everything that happened. She needs closure.”

Evelyn snorts. “Oh, yeah? Complex feelings? I doubt it. She’s a hero, they don’t think in shades of gray. I’m a bad guy, she stopped me, end of story. What’s there to feel complicated about?”

Quite gently, Winston says, “I don’t know her exact reasons for coming here. All I know is that you could use the company. But if you want me to send her away, I’ll do it.” He snaps his fingers. “That quick.”

She opens her mouth, about to say, _Hell yes. Send her away. I don’t want her here._

But the words will not depart her tongue.

She chokes on them.

As Evelyn flounders, Winston is about to say something—perhaps another nugget of comfort—but Evelyn interrupts him. “No,” she says, clenching her fist at her side and speaking the word as though it physically hurts her. “Don’t send her off.”

Surprised but a little pleased, Winston asks, “Why’d you change your mind?”

“Because.” Evelyn gives him a tired, lopsided, and not-very-genuine smile. “This should be interesting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're damn right it should be.


	3. Oh, god, I'm closing my teeth

Obviously she has no idea what to expect. There is no rulebook, no guideline, no pattern of social etiquette that dictates what will probably happen when you meet up with a woman who you’re essentially in jail for trying to kill.

Evelyn knows what the elephant in the room will be. Elastigirl’s children. She has three: a teenager, a preteen and a baby, as far as Evelyn remembers. Oh, who is she kidding: of course she remembers. Their faces are burnt into her.

She had never intended to hurt them. They just needed to be out of the way, safely put aside so they couldn’t cause trouble. And if that had happened, Evelyn’s plan might actually have succeeded. In the end, it was the kids who ruined everything. That damn baby.

What scares her the most is how, even though she never intended to injure those children… in the end, she’s gotta admit to herself, if they _had_ been hurt in service of her master plan, she wouldn’t have blinked.

And she thinks Elastigirl knows that.

And she suspects Elastigirl is going to rip her apart for it.

 

She and Winston head back into the living room, and she half-hopes Elastigirl will be gone, so that she doesn’t have to deal with all this emotional crap tonight. The woman is not gone, though. She still stands there, arms tightly folded. It’s so odd, so different, to see her wearing something other than a super suit. Instead, she’s dressed in a gray turtleneck and jeans, and her lips are pressed tight together, rendering her mouth to a bloodless slit. She looks Evelyn straight in the eyes, her own gaze sharp like dual machetes.

Evelyn doesn’t get too close. She hangs back near the entryway to the kitchen.

“Well!” says Winston brightly, standing halfway between them like the mediator he is. “It’s about time for a formal introduction. You two have never met like this, huh?”

“Never got around to it,” Evelyn replies. She wants desperately to look anywhere but the super’s eyes, but she just can’t.

“Well, no time like the present. Evelyn Deavor, this is Helen Parr.”

Still, El— _Helen_ doesn’t speak.

Evelyn says nothing, either. What is there to say?

Winston coughs awkwardly into his fist, then laughs. “Is nobody gonna say anything?”

Evelyn isn’t ready for the effect Helen’s voice will have on her. There’s something so disgustingly warm about the lispy rasp. Like coming home. Like honey. Gross. Wrong. That feeling is totally out of place in this cold, tense room.

“I’m starting to think this was a bad idea,” says Helen, stone-cold. “You know what, forget it. I shouldn’t have come here.”

But she doesn’t turn to leave.

Despite her own grotesque mix of emotions, Evelyn manages to find room for some snark. “What, ya don’t want to stay? Reconnect? Shoot the breeze?”

Some of the hardness retreats from Helen; her folded arms soften slightly, her expression turning less cold. As though Evelyn is so pathetic that she doesn’t merit anger. “I didn’t come here to _shoot the breeze_. I came here to ask you some questions. And now that I’m actually here, looking at you… I’m not sure I need the answers as much as I thought I did.”

Evelyn scoffs. “What questions? What’s there left to learn, Helen? You beat me. There was a trial. Here I am, locked up. It’s over. Everything’s _over_.” She cannot help the black bitterness that seeps into her tone with every passing word.

“Is that so.” The hardness returns to Helen, her arms unfolding and hanging at her sides as though she’s preparing to defend herself. “Well, I’m here to tell you, it’s _not_ over. As long as my kids are having nightmares—”

“Don’t pretend this is about your kids,” Evelyn sneers, her cruelty covering for the overwhelming mix of emotions. “This has nothing to do with them. This is about _your_ adult guilt and _your_ obsession. I bet it’s you having nightmares. Can’t sleep ’cos of me? I’m flattered.”

Helen has turned white with fury, and at her sides, her fists are clenched so tight, they’ve turned bloodless-white, too. Evelyn is almost afraid she’s going to get punched for her trouble. Winston hurriedly steps between them, holding his arms out—as if, if Elastigirl truly wanted to hurt Evelyn, his presence would make any difference. “Ladies! Please.” He shoots a narrow-eyed glare at Evelyn, which she returns double. “Let’s keep the drama to a minimum tonight.”

Evelyn can almost hear Helen’s teeth grind, and on a whim, she decides to be the bigger woman. “Sorry,” she says smoothly, sinking down onto the white chair behind her with her legs draped over its arm, making herself comfortable, because this is _her_ home, goddammit, and she deserves to be comfortable in it. “Didn’t mean to get so intense. I guess it’s the wine.”

“Oh, so you’ve been drinking? I’m shocked.” A burst of sudden meanness from Helen. Evelyn doesn’t respond, willing her eyes to be cooler than ice water as she returns Helen’s gaze.

Winston’s eyes are darting between the two women, as if measuring how big of a mistake he’s made tonight. “Uh,” he coughs delicately, “I’m not a hundred percent sure I should leave you guys alone. That is, if you decide to stay, Helen.”

“What, afraid it’ll turn violent?” Evelyn chuckles, projecting a total coolness as best she can. “I can handle myself, Win. Besides, you’ve got your… meeting thing. Go barhop. We’re good.”

If this really turns into a brawl, though, Helen would win in a second. She knows that. For all the brains and tech knowledge stuffed into her gigantic head, Evelyn damn well isn’t a super—thank god—and Helen is all but invulnerable. Evelyn has no weapons to defend herself with. She doesn’t have much strength, either; her recent weight loss hasn’t exactly sculpted her into Hercules. Helen could kill her, if she wanted.

And if she tried, Evelyn isn’t sure how hard she would fight back.

Winston is not convinced, turning to Helen. “Um—?”

Before he can start his sentence, a suddenly tired-looking Helen lifts a hand. “I’m not gonna kill her, Winston. Heck, I’m not even gonna lay a hand on her. I’m a super, not a vigilante.” She glances over at Evelyn. “Besides, it wouldn’t be fair.”

Despite the fact that Evelyn has just devoted several seconds to thinking about how a fight between her and Helen would be mismatched, Evelyn still bristles at Helen’s words. “I think I could take you. I’ve got more fight than you know,” she drawls.

“Right now you don’t look like you could fight a hamster and win,” Helen says flatly. She looks back at Winston. “Seriously, I’m not going to hurt her, or pick a fight. Not a physical one, at least. You have my word.”

Winston looks unconvinced, but he’s too trusting for his own good—and Evelyn’s. He raises his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine, I acquiesce. The floor’s all yours. I’ll leave you ladies alone to have a chat.” He glances at Evelyn and she sees infinite sadness in his eyes, and for a moment she’s struck with the fact that—though he hides the sorrow well—Winston has been through the goddamn ringer. “I hope it’s therapeutic for the both of you,” he says quietly.

Evelyn makes a _tch_ noise, but says nothing. Helen doesn’t speak either, only allows Winston to brush past as he leaves the living room. Distantly, Evelyn hears the creak-snick of the front door opening and closing. The heavier boom of the iron door beyond.

For a moment, the air in the room is heavy and coiled like a snake. Silence is deafening. Neither woman says anything.

Evelyn is about to open her mouth, to say something like, _Go ahead. Ask your questions._

But Helen speaks first. “You’re so thin,” she says quietly.

Not what Evelyn was expecting, and it actually startles her, so that for a few seconds she says nothing. Finally, she musters a response. “Yeah, comes with the territory. Prison food.”

“You’ve been out of prison for weeks.”

Evelyn shrugs, doesn’t answer. She knows exactly how loosely her black button-down blouse and white pants hang on her bone-thin frame. She knows she looks like a vulture. Or, an even more apt description: the carrion a vulture might eat.

Helen has one fist planted firmly on her hip, now, and her anger carries no deadly cold; it’s more like an indignance. “Have you been eating at _all?_ ”

“Ease up.” Evelyn rolls her eyes hard. “You’re not my mom. Go baby your own kids.”

“I’m not babying you. But damned if I’m going to watch you kill yourself by starvation.”

“Y’know, it’s funny, Winston said the same thing.” Evelyn drifts her gaze around the room before settling it on Helen, again trying to be ice-cold. “But Winston actually gives a shit about me. The only one around left who does. You? You just want me to live so I can suffer.”

Helen makes a low growl of annoyance. “Oh, for cryin’ out loud. I don’t even know why I came here.”

“Say, I’ve got a question for you, Elastigirl. Why _did_ you come here?”

“My husband,” Helen said bluntly. She still hadn’t moved from her position half-blocking the entryway into the living room, hadn’t budged an inch, as if any closer proximity to Evelyn would burn her skin off.

“Your husband? What?” Evelyn squints at her, trying to decide whether to be intrigued or disturbed.

“You’re right.” She says the words with acid, as though it pains her to admit it. “I _am_ having nightmares. Thanks to you and your master plot to destroy all supers. I have terrors every single night. I see your face. I see the goggles. I see my kids—” She cuts herself off, head jerking to the side; she’s said too much. “And Bob, in his _infinite_ wisdom, thought it would be a great idea for me to waltz down here and confront you. He convinced me that if I didn’t talk to you, I’d never get closure, and the nightmares will never stop.”

“So that’s why you came here? Closure?” Evelyn smirks, playing the role of the villain. “Well, just so you know, I’m gonna give you a hell of a time getting it.”

The redhead exhales. “Yeah, I know you will. I know.”

“I just think it’s kinda pathetic,” Evelyn muses, wishing she had a wine glass to turn around evilly in her hands, or to run her finger over the rim. “I thought you were here to kill me, being the vengeful mama bear or something, but it turns out you’re just here because your hubby is tired of getting kicked in your sleep.”

When Helen regards Evelyn, there’s something unplaceable about her expression. “Yeah, well, like I said to Winston, I’m not gonna be laying a hand on you tonight,” says the super. “It wouldn’t be a fair match.”

She scoffs. “Hmph, and you’re suddenly all about fairness?”

Elastigirl’s fury returns. “Don’t you talk to _me_ about fairness,” she says, her voice becoming something low and rough, approaching a growl.

It’s true, Evelyn didn’t fight fair. Slapping those goggles on Elastigirl’s face when she was unaware and trusting. “Yeah, I know you weren’t ready for me to put those goggles on you, but hey, you didn’t exactly put up a fight. Not very impressive for a super.”

“I don’t care about that. I’ve seen all the footage you recorded. I’ve seen how you made me kiss my husband to bring him down. And the worst part is: I don’t think you even know how depraved and disgusting that is.”

Evelyn is surprised, then laughs. “What? I didn’t make you do that. Is that what you think? Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t control your every move when you were hypnotized. My only order was for you to capture your husband. Everything else was up to you. And I must say, the kiss was quite the innovation on your part. You want someone to blame for fighting dirty? Blame yourself. ’Cos you fought very dirty indeed.” She sing-songs these last words playfully. She’s only being so mean, so cold, because vulnerability is not an option at this point. Weakness is not an option. Caring is not an option. She has to pretend to not give a shit, to be full of disdain and carelessness and nothing else. Because she knows if Helen finds a crack in that armor, she’s gonna dig her fingers in and pull it apart.

Provoked, Helen almost looks like she’s been punched, and for a second, Evelyn is fully prepared for Elastigirl’s arms to stretch over and strangle the life out of her. But she doesn’t. With a concerted effort, the redhead calms herself and says, “You know what? This was a mistake. And I’m leaving. I _have_ to leave before I do something we both regret.”

With that, she has retreated out the door, too quickly for Evelyn to call a snarky remark after her. And despite the fact that Evelyn was trying her damnedest to drive her guest away, there’s something to be said about the gap Helen’s absence leaves in a room. Evelyn has always noticed it. Always, since they first met. Even when Helen’s trying her best not to murder somebody, still, when she exits a room, she leaves behind a cold emptiness, a lack of warmth. As though it’s impossible not to miss her.

Evelyn grinds her teeth and wishes, to hell and back, that she didn’t fucking _miss_ her.

But distantly, she hears a jiggling, then a harder clattering, then a booming sound as someone pounds against the door. “Damn this thing!” she hears Helen’s voice cry. “Hello? Hello? Is someone out there?”

Evelyn gets up, slinking toward the doorway, where she leans against the frame and peers into the vestibule. Helen is at the door. She barely casts a scowling glance at Evelyn before once again twisting her hands around the doorknob, jiggling furiously. Evelyn instantly knows what has happened.

“Winston forgot to leave the key,” she mutters to herself, sinking down into the implications of this. The door is doubly locked: first, the front door, and then the iron barred door behind it. Both are unlockable by the same key; any visitors are required to apply to get the key from the courthouse. After they leave, they must take the key with them, returning it to the relevant authorities.

And Winston, who’s always been forgetful, has gotten so into the routine of returning the key to the authorities that he’ll probably do so cheerfully tonight, without even thinking about the implications for Helen.

Helen once again bangs on the door, pounding furiously with both fists.

“Nice try, but you might as well give up,” Evelyn says loudly over the din. “They reinforced my door when they put me on house arrest. You’re not gonna break it down. And nobody’s gonna hear you. I’m all alone up here.”

Helen turns, glaring indignantly at her host. “Tell me just what the fuck is going on!”

Hearing Elastigirl swear sends an odd jolt through Evelyn, a jolt she tries her best to ignore. “Winston forgot to leave the key behind for you. And he locked the door behind him. It’s just habit.” She shrugs.

For a second Helen just stares at her, as though she can’t process what she’s heard. Finally she says, “So I’m locked in here. With you.” As if it’s the worst thing in the world.

Evelyn shrugs, giving a sharp, deadened grin. She doesn’t hope her eyes are cold now, she hopes they’re empty, because she doesn’t give a shit. “Welcome to hell.”

Helen says, “So I’ll go out a window.”

“And risk outing yourself to the world?” Evelyn raises her eyebrows. “Damn, you must really hate me.”

“It’s dark. I’ll be fine.”

“No dice. Sorry, but my windows don’t open. They’re sealed. I guess the cops thought I’d try the same trick. There’s no entry in or out of this apartment that isn’t controlled by that key.”

For a second Helen actually looks like she’s going to start crying. “Winston will come back,” she says. “He’s not _that_ stupid. He’ll realize he forgot to leave the key, and he’ll come back.”

“Maybe,” Evelyn says half-heartedly. Inside, she’s already resigned herself to an entire night—and, possibly, following day—of enduring Helen’s toxic anger. Winston might remember. And, equally possible, he might not.

“Phones!” Helen cries, sounding relieved. “God, I forgot about _phones_. I’ll call somebody.”

Evelyn scoffs loudly. “You think they’d let me have technology as advanced as a _phone_? Face it, sister, you’re stuck. And trust me, I’m not any more happy about it than you are.”

Helen glares at her, hard. “Did Winston plan this? Tell me the truth.”

Evelyn raises her hands. “Hey, if he did, I knew nothing about it. I would’ve strangled him the very second he suggested it.”

“Hey, don’t act like _I’m_ bad company,” Helen snaps. “You’re the psychopathic attempted murderer, not me.”

“Yeah, right. You’re so innocent. You’re so pure. Because all supers only have pure intentions.” Her dead, cold exterior slips away, and some real passionate anger slips out. “Trust me, _Helen_ , I don’t want your company any more than you want mine. You still represent a corrupt institution I would love nothing more than to bring down.”

“Oh, so the truth comes out. You still hate supers. I thought part of the reason why they let you out so early is because you were penitent. Regretful. Doesn’t seem like that to me.”

“You’re goddamn right,” she spits, smiling around the words. “I don’t regret one single thing I did. I haven’t changed my ways and chosen the straight path after all. If I escaped tomorrow, I’d probably do it all over again. Only this time, I’d make sure I did the job right.”

It’s not true, not any of it. She has no idea what she believes anymore. No idea what she’d do, where she’d go, if she escaped. She just knows she doesn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. She’s had more than enough of that. She doesn’t want anyone else to hurt because of her.

So why is she trying her best to hurt Helen now?

Helen stares at her a moment, sizing her up, then says, “You want to know something? During the trial, I tried my best to empathize with you. I tried to see things from your point of view. I tried to understand why you hate supers so much. And you know what? I got _nothing_.” She takes a step forward like she’s trying to intimidate. “Your views, your _core beliefs_ , are nothing more than twisted, traumatized crap. They make no sense. They’re a cover for the truth: you’re just a damaged, deranged woman who never got over her daddy issues. That’s all you are and all you’ll ever be.”

Wow. So Helen is _just_ as capable of being mean as Evelyn is.

She opens her mouth to deliver a biting response, but closes it just as quickly, as she finds herself incapable. To her own shock and disgust, she thinks she’s going to _cry_. Evelyn, you stupid, weak bitch, don’t you _dare_ cry. Not now, not in front of her.

She manages to say, “Glad you got that out of your system? I bet you’ve been waiting to say that for a long time. Finally, the truth comes out. You came here to cut me down. Well, tough luck. I feel nothing anymore. You might as well be throwing punches at a rock.”

She retreats from the room, calling over her shoulder, “Let’s just agree to avoid each other until Winston comes back to save us. Otherwise, one of us is going to end up dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spicy!


	4. We pretend that we just don't care

It’s easy enough for Evelyn to pretend she feels nothing. She’s had ample practice.

Hasn’t she spent more than a decade pretending that the deaths of her parents only make her feel a little blue, instead of seething fury and grief? Hasn’t she spent more than a decade disguising her pain for Winston’s sake, for the company’s sake? Hasn’t she spent more than a decade covering up her beliefs about why her parents _really_ died, because the first time she even attempted to broach the subject with Winston, he snapped at her? Hasn’t she spent years dedicating her personal life to developing her master plan, without letting anyone know her secret, without letting anyone in, including her brother, _especially_ her brother, the person in the world she loves most?

Yeah. She’s had lots of practice. She’s become an expert on wearing masks.

So how big of a deal was it, really, to add one more mask? The mask with the glowing blue eyes?

 

She retreats to her bedroom, which becomes her sanctuary. There, she lies on top of the sheets, one leg crossed over another, arms at her sides, and listens balefully to the sound of Helen clomping around outside. From the distant noises Evelyn can hear, it seems like Helen is trying every possible method of escape. Banging on the door and shouting for help: no luck; as Evelyn truthfully mentioned earlier, there’s nobody occupying this floor but her. Trying to break the door down: no luck; the door’s un-break-downable, even for a super of Helen’s caliber. And, Evelyn imagines, the super’s probably trying to thin herself down enough to slip underneath the door. No luck with that, either, apparently.

Although, Evelyn idly thinks, Elastigirl’s minimum recorded thickness was one millimeter. And sure, that only happened under extreme duress, but still, the gap underneath the door is far greater than that. Helen should be able to escape easily…

But maybe she just doesn’t want to.

Evelyn pushes that thought away, disgusted with herself for even thinking it. Of _course_ Helen wants to leave. She and Helen are like two polar-opposite magnets. They repel each other. They hate each other. Both of them hates every single thing the other stands for. And Evelyn almost killed Elastigirl and her children. Why wouldn’t Helen want to leave?

After perhaps half an hour of continuous attempts to escape, the noise stops. Evelyn lays there in silence and darkness, her steady breathing the only sound that envelops her, and wonders where Helen is now. Probably sitting against the door with fists clenched in frustration, or maybe retired to the living room. Or maybe she’s already left, stretched thinner than a sheet and slipped underneath the door.

Idly, Elastigirl’s words from earlier float through Evelyn’s head. What did Elastigirl call her, exactly _? A damaged, deranged woman who never got over her daddy issues_. She vividly recalls Elastigirl’s furious face as the redheaded super delivered the blow. For some reason, this statement—and coming from Elastigirl, no less—stings worse than anything else. Anything Evelyn heard during the trial, any accusations that have been leveled toward her. They don’t hurt more than this. None of them.

And they make her seethe, too, curling her hands into knots around her bedsheets and twisting until she feels something tear. _Daddy issues_. Her father was murdered. Murdered by the gangsters that broke into his house, sure, but also murdered by the supers who couldn’t bother to show up and help, and murdered by the attitude that had infected his mind, the attitude that told him he should rely on the mercy of superheroes instead of helping his own damn self. She’d always thought her dad was something of an idiot due to his obsessive love for supers, but that doesn’t matter, because she loves him, and every second she doesn’t get to see him smile is another wasted second of her fucking useless life. Every day that went by where Evelyn invented another revolutionary piece of technology, and her father wasn’t there to clap her on the back and exclaim _Good job, Ev!_ , was a wasted day. A wasted invention. Just a waste in general.

Her mother, too. Oh, god, that is almost worse. Evelyn’s mother had never got over her grief. That night after her dad was shot, when Evelyn entered the police station and wrapped her arms around her mom and tried her best to comfort her, and felt her mother’s total coldness, a stiff statue in her arms, she quickly realized that her mother would never recover. Sure enough, a few months later, a stroke took the elderly woman in the darkest hours of night while she slept, and Evelyn hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye. It was the same with her father. Her parents had both been ripped away with no warning, no mercy from the fates or whoever the hell was up there. No chance to let go.

So she hadn’t let go. Not now, not ever.

 _Daddy issues_. Helen’s a fucking tool. This goes so far beyond “daddy issues” that Evelyn almost snarls to think about it. This is an institutional issue, a problem that plagues the world. People who are so dependent on superheroes that, when real danger strikes them, they’re so paralyzed waiting for a hero to save them that they can’t lift a finger to save themselves. People like her father and her mother, and oh, she’s damn sure that there are more examples. Helen can reduce it to simple bullshit all she likes, if that makes her feel better, but Evelyn knows the truth. It’s because of Helen, and all her compatriots, that Evelyn’s family was ripped apart.

But just as quickly as the fury overtakes her, it slips away, and she sighs and unclenches her fists from the sheets.

She’s so tired of being angry. So tired of feeling hurt. So tired of tiredness.

Another few years of good behavior in house arrest, and Evelyn might just get freed, but for what? What’s there, out there in the big old world, for her? She’s beyond damaged, and she hates most everything in the world, and she’s sick of the rest. She can’t return to her old DevTech position—she is a terrorist; the public would riot. She can’t exactly begin her own startup tech company; for one thing, she would never betray Winston like that, and for another thing, with her reputation, such a company would never get off its feet. She can’t look for a new job, because nobody would hire her; her name is poison. Sure, with her amassed billion-dollar fortune and Winston’s generosity, she can live peacefully forever, doing whatever she wanted. But her life would be goalless. Surrounded on all sides by people who hated her, because everyone in the world except Winston hates her.

She doesn’t really care if people despise her—sure, it’s annoying, but it’s expected, and she’s resigned to it.

At least, that’s what she tells herself. And she hopes to god that it’s true. She hopes to be strong enough to weather everyone’s hatred for the rest of her life. Forget house arrest; _that_ is her punishment. _That_ is her sentence.

It’s at times like this, times where Evelyn falls into a rabbit hole of speculation and self-pity like this, when she gets the urge to drink. But the white wine bottle is in the kitchen, and she doesn’t want to leave her room, because Helen is somewhere out there. Lurking like a ghost in some liminal space.

She breathes in, breathes out, and supposes she’s an alcoholic, because every single cell in her body feels drained of liquid, screaming out for a drink. Until finally, the rewards offered b alcohol seem far greater than the punishment of running into Elastigirl, and the former inventor can’t stand it anymore. She rises from the bed, slinking quietly from her room through the hallway beyond, past the living room. Helen is sitting on the couch, and Evelyn goes behind the couch, not sparing a glance at the redheaded super. Helen doesn’t look at her, either, though Evelyn is sure she’s been seen.

She goes into the kitchen, dark and dim, and opens the fridge, which provides the only light, shining like heaven. Inside its pristine white interior, she finds the holy grail: an unopened bottle of Chardonnay. Warmly yellow, intoxicatingly inviting.

She opens it and drinks, not bothering to get a glass. That’s her M.O. nowadays.

With the fervor of her drinking, the liquid spills out, turning the bottle’s neck all slick. When Evelyn finally lowers the bottle from her mouth, it easily slips from her hand and shatters at the floor by her feet. An unearthly loud noise.

“Fuck,” she says calmly and tiredly, staring down at the mess. This isn’t the first time this has happened, either. It happened just the other day.

She feels the same thing she felt then, staring down at those glimmering glass shards that lie among the expanding pool of amber liquid. An urge to pick up one of those shards and put it to good use. To just fucking end it.

She’s still staring down at the shards, paralyzed, when she hears a dry, dark voice at the door. “You gonna just stare at that mess all night?”

“That was my plan.” She doesn’t even look at Helen, trying to be cold again, when all she feels is embarrassed. She must look so stupid, caught staring at the mess like some kind of imbecile instead of actually, y’know, being a fucking adult and cleaning it up. Because adults clean up their messes. Adults take responsibility.

She hears Helen exhale, as though she doesn’t want to say what she says next. “Are you okay? Are you cut?”

She scoffs. “What do you care if I’m cut?”

“Just tell me if you’re okay,” Helen snaps, annoyed. “For god’s sake.”

She supposes it’s just natural. It’s Helen’s superhero nature peeking out: that urge to protect and help everyone, even depraved, disgusting villains such as Evelyn Deavor.

“I’m not cut,” she admits. “I’m fine.”

Helen is silent for a second. Then she says, “You know, you’ve been standing there staring at that broken bottle for probably ten minutes.”

Was she? Evelyn hadn’t been counting.

“Wow, interesting,” the inventor sneers. “You’re like a mathematician or something. I don’t need your help and I don’t need your fucking mothering, so why don’t you go back to sitting in silence and we can avoid each other?”

“You’re really pathetic, aren’t you,” Helen murmurs, as though she has discovered something. What makes it even worse: the words aren’t meant as an insult. They’re meant to be pitying.

“Yeah. I’m pathetic.” Evelyn turns away, searching around for a broom or something else to clean up this damn mess. In the dim kitchen, it’s hard.

The kitchen light flicks on. Helen’s doing. Still ignoring the super, Evelyn finally locates a broom and starts to sweep the shards together, the bristles quickly getting sticky with Chardonnay.

“I can’t believe you’re the one who almost killed my whole family,” Helen says flatly, still regarding her; Evelyn feels the super’s eyes on her like knives. “You. You pathetic, skinny thing. You look like you’d get blown over by a ten-mile-an-hour breeze.”

“Do I detect pity in those words, Elastigirl? Rest assured, I don’t want it,” she drawls, still not looking up from her work. “Even like this, I’m still a million times richer and better-off than you’ll ever be.” She taps her temple. “And smarter, don’t forget that.”

From the corner of her eye she sees the redhead nod slowly. “Yeah, you’d think that was a bragging point, wouldn’t you? All your money and brains. You just don’t get it. You’re _pathetic_. Here you are, locked up in here, drinking your days away, always alone. I’ve got something you’ll never have. I have a family who loves me. Kids who love me, a husband that loves me, friends who love me, and I love ’em back. You, you’re a husk of a person with no heart in there, or if it _is_ there, it’s shriveled. Your life is empty. And I’m damn well sorry for you. Anybody would be.”

“Yeah, I don’t want your pity,” Evelyn mutters, bending down with a small pan to sweep the shards into. “So you can just take it back and give it to someone who cares. Me and my _daddy issues_ want to be alone.” She cuts her finger along a piece of glass, makes a small disapproving noise and sucks the blood away. “That was a damn expensive bottle,” she says half to herself.

Helen says quietly, “I’m sorry I said that.”

“What?” Evelyn glances up at her, blinking. “Say that again?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “That was a low blow.”

“Oh! A mighty super, admitting her own faults! A super, admitting she’s not perfect! Someone call the presses!” Evelyn cries dramatically.

“Look. I’m not a super tonight. I came here as _Helen_ , dressed in these civilian clothes, because I wanted to talk to you on the level.”

Evelyn snorts, standing to her full height with the pan in her hand; she’s pretty sure she got all the glass shards, and if she didn’t, she hopes Helen steps on them barefoot. “Nice sentiment, but you’ll always be a super. That’s what you are. Lack of a costume doesn’t change that, sister.” She heads over to one of the marble-topped kitchen counters, sliding out the garbage can from underneath. “And sorry, but no matter what your husband says, I’m not here to be your personal therapist. Talking with me isn’t gonna give you closure. It’s just going to make your nightmares worse.” With that, she uses her hand to sweep the glass into the garbage. As if to show that she doesn’t give a fuck about the thousand tiny pinpricks of pain, about the blood that instantly wells from her palm. To show that she feels nothing.

Helen says softly, staring at her bloodied palm: “You know something? All my nightmares are about Screenslaver. You aren’t in them.”

“I _am_ Screenslaver.”

“No, Screenslaver was an invention. A fake villain for shock tactics and nothing more. A scary one, yeah,” she admits with a small chuckle, “but a fake. You, though… I was never afraid of you.”

“Yeah, right. When we were ten thousand feet in the air and I was taking away your oxygen, you weren’t scared of me?”

“I was scared,” says Helen slowly, sussing out her own feelings, “of dying. I was scared that you were gonna end your own life, too. I was scared of the other supers under your control. I was scared that a lot of people would die that day. But no. I was never scared of _you_. Because I knew that without the tech behind you, you were just a screwed-up basket case. Not really a threat.” Helen shrugs as she says the words. So brutally honest, as always.

“What is this? A midnight roasting session?” she laughs humorlessly, pushing the garbage can back into its position.

“No. As of right now, this is an intervention. I saw how you were looking at that glass when I walked in. I’m not stupid, Evelyn. I know what you were thinking about. I know what you’ve probably been thinking about every single day you’ve been here.”

“And so you’re _intervening_?” she asks incredulously. “Why the hell don’t you just let nature take its course?”

“Because deep down,” she says quietly, crossing her arms, “I don’t think you really want to die. And besides, that isn’t justice.”

“Oh. So this is about keeping me alive so I can face _justice_.”

“So what if it is?” Helen snaps, patience wearing thin. “When I first spoke to Winston, he told me you weren’t doing so great, and now I believe him. You’re trying to drink yourself to death, or cut yourself to death, or starve yourself to death. Well, it’s not happening on my watch. I didn’t testify in court—didn’t _allow my children_ to testify in court—so that you could check out early. I did it so that you’d face justice for trying to destroy dozens, probably hundreds, of innocent people. And damned if I’m going to let you take the easy road out, Evelyn.”

“So what’re you going to do?” Evelyn smirks mirthlessly, folding her arms. “Move in with me? Follow my every move for the rest of my life?”

Helen returns her hard stare tenfold. “I was thinking more like, I’d report you to the authorities and have you placed on suicide watch.”

The inventor’s expression doesn’t change, but internally, she’s gone ice-cold. “No, see, you wouldn’t do that,” she says as casually as she can manage, “because that might cost me what little freedom I have left.” Despite her best efforts, some of her internal fear slips into her tone.  

Helen raised an eyebrow. “You think I care about your freedom?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Evelyn mutters. “I know what you care about. You care about justice. You saved me from falling to my death, that day on the plane, because you wanted justice. And you’re ‘saving’ me now because you want justice. And your version of justice means that I stay alive to suffer.” Suddenly done with this conversation, she stalks forward, pushing past Helen. “I get the picture, Elastigirl.”

It isn’t anyone’s fucking business if Evelyn wants to commit suicide, passive or no. Especially not Elastigirl’s.

When she’s halfway across the living room, she feels a hard hand gripping her shoulder. Elastigirl has stretched across the room to grab her. “Listen, Evelyn.” Something has changed in the redhead’s voice, something is suddenly broken and vulnerable, causing even the stone-hearted Evelyn to stop and listen.

“I didn’t save you because I want to see you suffer. I saved you because it was the right thing to do. And…” She pauses, scowling at the very words she’s about to say. “…because we were _friends_. Damn me, I’m a sentimental idiot when it comes down to it. I can’t just let somebody I care about die. Not even _you_.”

For some reason this cut to Evelyn’s core: Elastigirl simultaneously saying she’d cared about her, and suggesting with her disgusted tone that caring about Evelyn was the stupidest, most pathetic thing she’d ever done.

Evelyn smiles bleakly and repeats the line she’d said in the plane, all those months ago. “You’re kidding yourself, Elastigirl. We were never friends.”

“Cut the crap,” says Helen bluntly. “We _were_ friends. I know you like to pretend you don’t feel anything, but don’t insult my intelligence by trying to convince me of that. We laughed together and had nice relaxed friendly conversations and we really clicked, and it was _real_. It was fucking _real_ , Evelyn. Don’t lie to me. I get that your lies probably make you feel better about betraying me, but still. Don’t you dare lie.”

Those words— _it was fucking real_ —get her right in the gut. Because it _was_ real. Nothing Helen’s saying is wrong. They _did_ laugh together, real and unabashed and unaltered, and they _did_ click like best friends despite only having known each other for a few weeks, and she could’ve talked to Elastigirl for hours with intense interest despite her all-consuming hatred of supers, because Elastigirl was a goddamn exception. And it _was_ real. All of it.

Well, almost all.

Is there any point in pretending anymore?

Because she can’t be a genuine vulnerable person for more than two seconds in one week, Evelyn simply shrugs. “Yeah, maybe all that was true—for you. Good for you, then. You found a friend. Me? I was manipulating you. I felt nothing.”

Helen scowls and her mouth scrunches into an inverted V, a sure sign of anger. “For god’s sake, can you _stop lying?_ ”

Her gaze, directed straight at Helen, is flinty as hell. “Can _you_ accept that sometimes, things you don’t wanna hear aren’t necessarily lies?”

“We were friends,” Elastigirl says firmly… but, is Evelyn imagining things, or is there a crack in that armor?

She chuckles, again, with mirth she doesn’t feel. “You let yourself get played. Tough break. I guess I’m just that good of an actor.”

“Well, I was _your_ friend,” Helen unexpectedly barks. “Even if you weren’t mine. _I_ felt something, and I’m not too proud to admit that. And maybe it was stupid of me, to think somebody as high-and-mighty as you could ever have a true friend, could ever care about somebody the way I thought you—”

Evelyn cuts off the woman’s Southern-tinged rant with a raised hand. “Shut up,” she says calmly. “I’m done hearing it.”

Evelyn did this for a simple reason: she was two seconds away from breaking down, two seconds away from admitting, _yes, I adored you, you were my friend, you’re funny and charming and caring and honest and sarcastic and you’ve got an actual moral compass and you’re smart as a whip and you frustrate me and you turn me on and I wouldn’t mind talking with you every day for the rest of my life_ , but of course those words are never going to leave her carefully-guarded mouth. So instead she abandons the room, leaving Helen to face her demons alone.


	5. Midnight, lose my mind

 

She recalls Winston’s words, not too long ago: _You could use the company_. Referring to Elastigirl, who is not good company by any stretch of the imagination.

Her brother thinks he’s doing her a favor, huh? Well, he isn’t doing _either_ of them a favor—or himself, because the very moment she lays eyes on him next, she’s going to strangle him. If Helen doesn’t get there first.

Helen is not “company.” She’s a ghostlike presence in the apartment, and even though Evelyn stays locked up in her bedroom, lying silent on top of her covers, she can’t get to sleep because she can’t stop thinking about her guest. Outside all is silent. She assumes Helen has gone back to sitting quietly on the sofa. The tension is tightly-wound in Evelyn, and she stares up at the dark ceiling in frustration, unable to close her eyes. She doesn’t know what she’s afraid of. Helen killing her in her sleep? Not likely. First of all, she’d probably get caught afterwards and go to prison, and Helen wouldn’t risk her ability to mother her children, especially not for Evelyn. Secondly, as she’s made clear, Helen genuinely believes her former adversary is too pathetic to kill.

And thirdly, Helen isn’t a killer. She just isn’t. Evelyn recalls poring over old interviews, dossiers and files related to Elastigirl, and the hero is never recorded as having killed anyone. Numerous times she offered mercy. Numerous times she put her life in danger to rescue people who didn’t deserve to be rescued… Evelyn should know, she’s one of them. It’s not Elastigirl’s style to kill somebody, especially not someone as pathetic and unthreatening as Evelyn.

Her stomach is grumbling loudly. Since the sandwich Winston got her, she hasn’t eaten anything. Nothing except wine. Unhealthy, sure, but c’mon—when was the last time Evelyn had a _healthy_ habit? But though her head is screaming for a drink and her belly is screaming for food, she’s not gonna leave the room. Not until it gets to be too much to bear. She doesn’t want to confront Elastigirl again.

On some weird level, it’s kind of nice, having something to actually _think_ about. The boredom is one of the worst things about living here under house arrest. Sometimes, she wishes she were back in prison, where—although she was relentlessly bullied for being a skinny trust-fund baby born to rich parents—at least she wasn’t _bored_. Here? Well. There’s nothing. She’s read all her books and magazines enough times to memorize them all—just in the past few weeks. And Winston brings her more books, and she’s grateful for that, but reading isn’t enough. She can’t focus—how could she? She’s drunk all the time—and her hands constantly itch to be working, to be holding a wrench or fiddling with wires, to be creating, inventing, exploring, building the framework behind her brother’s company. That’s her calling.

Of course, given her crimes, she’s likely never gonna be allowed around complex tech again.  

Back onto the subject of boredom. At least Helen’s presence has given her something to think about. Something to be afraid of.

She doesn’t know what she’s afraid of, exactly. Not being killed, that’s for sure. Being assaulted? Huh, maybe, if she pisses Helen off badly enough.

Seeing someone genuinely kind and honest, someone she liked, and being faced with the fact that she purposefully almost destroyed this person’s life? The guilt, the shame, the feelings of wretchedness? Is _that_ what she’s so scared of?

She idly wonders about the questions Helen intended to ask her. What were the questions? Were they as stupidly simple as “Why did you do it?” Or were they more complex? Since Helen seems to believe that answering the questions could give her closure, could end her torment, should Evelyn just bloody _answer_ them? Does she owe that to her victim?

No. The cynical side of her speaks up. She doesn’t owe anybody a damn thing.

The other side speaks up, now, telling her: she owes Helen her life.

When she finally gets up and heads over to the door, exiting her bedroom, it’s simply because she can’t stand the hunger any longer, and dammit, she just doesn’t have the self-control necessary to starve herself. She doesn’t know what time it is. Probably midnight. Probably later. A long time since she last ate, no matter what.

When she passes the living room, Helen—who she’d been prepared to ignore or avoid, because it’s easier—isn’t there. Evelyn quirks an eyebrow with surprise, wondering where else the super could be. Eh. Doesn’t matter. Maybe she left, found an exit at last. Evelyn goes into the kitchen, munches on a cold cheese sandwich, leftovers from Winston’s delivery earlier. Food is an interesting issue. Other than what Winston brings her, Evelyn is allowed to fill out a form requesting food, once a week. She can ask for anything. The authorities bring her whatever she wants, as long as _she_ foots the bill.

That first week she’d been back, she had ordered gold leaf just to fuck with them. To her amusement, it had promptly arrived with her first food delivery, wrapped in foil and packaged carefully. It’s still sitting on some shelf somewhere, far as she knows. She’s got no use for gold leaf. She’s not _that_ fancy.

When she’s done, she grabs a bottle of white wine from her cupboard. The authorities don’t seem to care if she drinks herself to death. Alcohol is a human right, she supposes. She orders huge amounts of wine every week, because she always finishes off last week’s supply so quickly.

The wine is cool and fruity traveling down her throat, and she wills it to turn off her brain and bring that beautiful buzz. So she can forget everything.

Still clutching the bottle, Evelyn slouches back across the living room, intending to return to her bedroom and allow the drink to lull her to sleep. But she notices something. The door to her balcony is open. Evelyn’s personal balcony is more like an enclosed veranda, separating her from the outside world with reinforced windows that don’t open anymore. But the glass goes floor-to-ceiling, and it’s a spectacular view. She doesn’t go out there anymore because she doesn’t like looking at the world.

Curious, she heads to the doorway and peers out into the nighttime darkness. Did Elastigirl somehow escape through here? But no. The heroine is there. She is sitting on a padded deck chair, legs pulled up to her chest. The only light out here comes from a small lantern that hangs in the corner, and half of Helen’s face is dimly lit in a yellow glow. It’s more eerie than it should be.

Helen hasn’t noticed her presence—or is pretending not to have noticed—and Evelyn could easily slip away. But instead, for some reason she can’t explain, she talks. “There’s more lights out here, you know. You don’t have to sit in the dark.”

The heroine shrugs, not looking at Evelyn. “I like to look at the city,” she says in a flat voice, not giving away her emotions.

“Yeah. It ain’t a half-bad view, huh?” she remarks, staring out over the skyline. Her penthouse is quite high-up, one of the tallest buildings downtown, and all the glowing lights of New Urbem are on display below them, colorful and resplendent in the darkness. Even so late, the city refuses to sleep.

Helen shakes her head and chuckles. “It reminds me of the good ol’ days. The ones my husband won’t shut up about.”

“Your golden days as a super,” Evelyn guessed. It felt so fucking surreal to be talking to Helen so casually like this, after they’d spent the whole night fighting.

“Yup. Municiberg looked a lot like this from above, from the rooftops.”

“Don’t all cities look the same?” asked the inventor dryly.

“You’d be surprised.” She leans back in her chair, shifting and sighing. Something about her looks so monumentally sad. Evelyn has never seen Helen wear an expression like that, as though she’s given up on something. Then she notices the bottle on the ground beside the super’s chair. A red wine bottle. Huh. Helen’s been drinking? She’s known the superheroine to enjoy a glass or two of wine before, but damn, half the bottle’s missing.

“I was seventeen,” she says conversationally. “When I first started hero work, y’know. Ah, jeez, I was _so_ young. But I’d had these strange powers all my life, and I finally decided, well, I’d better put them to some use. I’m old enough to help people, why don’t I try? So I did. I was pretty bad at first—always tripping and stumbling all over myself, letting criminals escape left and right. I got the hang of hero work pretty quick, though. I was lucky enough to have established friends who helped me navigate. Pretty soon, I was enjoying views like this one, almost every night. Staring across the city. Listening to a police scanner. Waiting for a bad guy to try something.”

“Established friends?” questions Evelyn. She remains standing in the doorway, far apart from Helen, but something in her body won’t let her move away and end the conversation. It’s so damn easy to _listen_ to Helen, so easy to care about everything she says, even if she won’t shut up about superheroes. “You mean, like, your husband?”

Helen shakes her head. “Nah. We didn’t meet until we were in our twenties. We were both pretty well-established by then. Popular. We even had our own theme songs.” She laughs. “I remember, before I met him, I kept hearing his damn song on the radio all the time. It annoyed the living crap out of me. _Mr. Incredible, Incredible_ —”

“Catching the bad guys, pow pow pow,” says Evelyn monotonously, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, I’ve heard that little ditty from my brother enough times.”

“Yeah, I bet you have,” says Helen, snorting. “What a groupie.”

“I bet you had to deal with schmucks like Winston a lot, back in your day.”

“Ehhh, they weren’t _that_ hard to handle,” says Helen dismissively. “I liked the kids, mostly. It was a whole different matter, having some sweaty bearded dude waving a glossy photograph of your ass in your face and demanding an autograph—”

“Oh, Christ. Was that a regular thing?”

Helen shrugs. “Regular enough. The creeps started to blend together eventually. I just punched ’em and moved on. The kids, though—I always liked the kids. I loved the idea that little girls were looking up to me. That was an amazing feeling. Daunting, sure, but amazing. I loved signing autographs for the kids, having little conversations with ’em, trying to be a good influence… I know that sounds corny.”

“It sounds extremely corny. Do continue.” She takes a swig of white wine. If she’s gonna have an actual conversation with Helen, they’d better _both_ be buzzed.

“There were fan clubs, teenagers who’d dress up like me in these threadbare homemade costumes. Even the boys, sometimes! Man, it was so flattering knowing that people loved me like that, especially kids. I tried my best to be a good influence for them. Bob never really cared about his fan clubs—he just kinda viewed his fans as something that was natural. Like, someone as awesome as Mr. Incredible _will_ have fans, it’s not a question. That was Bob’s attitude. He humored them sometimes, but they mostly just annoyed him. Me, though? I was always in awe of the people that loved me.” She stares out over the city, exhales. “I always acted as confident as I could, but inside I was kinda scared that I would screw up and lose them.”

Evelyn decides she isn’t gonna lurk around in the doorway anymore. Out she goes, sinking down into a chair beside Helen’s. The bottle is comforting against her lips when she takes another swig. “Did you? Ever screw up and lose them, I mean?”

“Nah. Lucky enough for me. I was never involved in a lawsuit. My husband had a couple of big ones. A train accident, an injured wannabe suicide he’d rescued… that kind of thing. But me, I never had anything like that.”

“I know. Remember, I researched you for Winston. I know you’re a safer super than your husband, and that you’ve never been sued.”

“Then why’d you ask the question?”

“A lawsuit isn’t necessarily the same as a screwup,” Evelyn shrugs. “Did you ever say something you didn’t mean, something politically incorrect? Alienate your fanbase? Something like that?”

“Nah, not r…” She trails off, remembering. “Well, there was one time. There was a kid…”

“Yeah? A kid?”

“This little girl. I don’t remember her name. Maybe I should. She wanted to be my sidekick. It’s funny, my husband had pretty much the same situation—got us into a lot of hot water, later on. But anyway. This kid wanted to be my sidekick, and I had to tell her no. She kept following me around. She was probably eight, ten years old. She had a little homemade super suit. It would’ve been kinda cute if it wasn’t so goddamn _dangerous_. I kept saying no, no, no, trying to be as gentle as I could, trying to keep her away from the crimes and the criminals, until finally I had to be very stern with her. My hand was forced. I didn’t want to be mean. I asked for her address and practically dragged her back there, and I had a very pointed conversation with her parents.

“The next day, I was shocked. It was on the news. Her mother went to the media and said that Elastigirl had treated her daughter like crap. The public turned against me like a freakin’ tsunami. Eventually, I had to go on some talk show and make an apology for the way I’d behaved.” She sighs. “I guess I _was_ a little too hard on her and her parents. I was just frustrated.”

“Doesn’t sound to me like you were too hard on anybody. An eight-year-old running around unchecked, following a super like a puppy? She could’ve been killed.” Inwardly, Evelyn is remembering how Winston had behaved at that age. He’d followed supers around like a puppy, too. Of course, due to their father’s close relationship with the NSA, the Deavor siblings had had no shortage of supers who they could trail behind. There had always been one or two supers around the Deavor household, chatting it up with Evelyn’s father, or having meetings about NSA initiatives.

Impulsively she says, “Winston was the same. He followed supers around all the time. Always asking questions, staring up at them with wide eyes. He practically fainted when any hero paid the smallest amount of attention to him.”

Helen laughs. “Why are you using the _past_ tense?”

Evelyn can’t suppress a snort at that. “Fair. Totally fair.”

“But you. You were never like that?” Helen questions. “You never liked supers?”

Evelyn shrugs, not meeting Helen’s eyes. “Mmm… no. Not ever.”

“Even though you were raised around them, with a father, mother and brother who all loved them? Huh. How’d you manage to avoid the bug?” Although Helen speaks teasingly, Evelyn can sense that something has shifted in their conversation. This must be one of Helen’s big questions.

She shrugs yet again, lifting her thin shoulders and letting them fall. “Dunno. I just never thought supers were all that great. One of my earliest memories: I must’ve been, oh, four or five. I was watching the news. There was this big story about how a super saved a bunch of kids from drowning after their school bus speeded into a river. My dad was full of praise for the super, but I only remember feeling disdain. I remember thinking, _Why doesn’t the government do something about stuff like that? Why do we have to rely on supers to save us?_ ”

“You thought that. At five years old,” says Helen flatly, making it clear that she doesn’t believe it.

“Yup. I did.” It’s the truth. “And I kept thinking stuff like that, all through my formative years. Guess it shows. I always thought my family were a bunch of schmucks for what they believed—for their blind faith in supers—but I didn’t _hate_ superheroes. I just thought they were a foolish institution whose presence prevented the rest of the world from getting off their asses and doing something to help themselves. It was my own private philosophy.” She presses her mouth together, feelings the bumps and chapped flaps of dry skin; her lips are in pretty bad shape nowadays. She doesn’t want to say what comes next.

Helen says it for her. “But then your dad was murdered. And that was the catalyst for everything.”

“Yup,” says Evelyn coldly.

“And you blamed supers for that?”

Evelyn shakes her head, a wry smile forming on her mouth, and takes another drink before she continues. “I blamed a lot of people,” she admits. “My brother, for encouraging my father’s stupid belief that heroes would always come and save us. My father, for _having_ that stupid belief in the first place. The paramedics and the cops—they didn’t get there for fifteen minutes, and by that time, the robbers were already gone and my dad was already dead. Myself, for not being there.”

Helen frowns. “Why would you blame yourself? Even if you’ve been there, what could you have done?”

Her hand clenches around the neck of her wine bottle. “I could’ve convinced my dad to get into the goddamn safe room, instead of entrusting his life to a bunch of men in tights who weren’t even _there_.”

Helen is silent for just a few moments, considering. She says, “I know what a lot of people would probably tell you, trying to comfort you. Nobody killed your father except for the guy with the gun. But I’m not gonna tell you that, because I think we both know that’s not true.”

“Do we?” she scoffs, glaring down at the wine bottle that sits in between her crossed legs.

“Yeah. We do. I get that if your dad had gone into his safe room, he might have lived.”

“ _Would_ have lived,” she snaps.

“ _Might_ have lived,” Helen insists stubbornly, “if he’d got there in time. And I realize that it’s easy to blame supers, as a group, for the mindset that led to his death.”

“Easy?” She gives Helen a piercing stare, a great pent-up fury and frustrating sense of unfairness welling up in her chest. “You think it’s easy to blame heroes? That I’m taking the _easy_ way out?”

Helen doesn’t flinch, even in the face of her former adversary’s great anger. When she speaks, she does so with uncommon gentleness. “Of course that’s not what I meant. None of this has been easy for you.”

She angrily wipes away a stray, stupid tear that dared to run down her face. She can taste its wet salt in her mouth. “There’s that damn pity again. I told you, I don’t _want_ your pity.”

Helen tilts her head. “It’s easy to pity you. It’s easy to hate you, too.”

“In the end, I think I’d prefer your hate.”

“My hate is telling me that you tried to kill me, my children, my husband, and my friends. That you took over my mind and forced me to do horrible things, things that almost made me throw up when I watched the footage later. My hate is telling me that you’re an evil human being. But my pity is telling me different things.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s it saying?” She speaks the words with sarcasm, though she doesn’t meet Helen’s eyes. And she genuinely wants to know the answer.

“It’s telling me that you’re damaged. You’re grieving. You never dealt with that grief properly. Now, listen, I’m not one to believe in emotional woo-woo and psychic healing and dumb self-help crap; I’ve never fallen for all that stuff. But it’s pretty clear to me that you’ve needed counselling for a long time. You need someone to help you through your parents’ deaths, and you never got that help. So you lashed out.”

“You make me sound like a petulant child,” she sneers. “Why don’t you admit what I _really_ am: somebody who had a philosophy, a well-thought-out belief system that led me to do what I did. You’re reducing me to an emotional wreck who lashed out because she never got the chance to talk about her _feelings_.”

“I think it’s more complicated than that. I think it’s a little of both. But in the end, I think we can blame your actions on that grief. I really do. That’s not a professional opinion. That’s just what I think.”

“Nah, that’s not it. That’s just what you _want_ to think, because deep down, you don’t want to believe that somebody could have a rational thought process behind hating superheroes. Why don’t you just admit it?”

“Because it’s not true,” Helen says firmly. “That’s why.”

She scoffs, but doesn’t respond. Inwardly, of course she knows Helen’s right. Like most of the time.

“You’re different from earlier,” she abruptly comments, wanting to change the subject. “You’re feeling nicer, it seems. A little more charitable. Is it ’cos you’re drunk?”

“Probably. But it’s also because I’ve had some time to think.”

“And what have you been thinking about?”

“You.”

The simple word sends a chill through Evelyn, scuttling down her spine. She angrily rejects her body’s inane reaction. It’s just a word. Why should a word chill her?

“Coming here to see you… Bob was right about that. It’s changed some things. In the months since the trial, I think I’ve been inventing a story in my mind. It’s a version of you that just doesn’t exist. I’ve been thinking of you as this big bad monster. This deranged person who came after my kids. Bloodthirsty, pure evil. It’s how I’ve been coping. It’s probably why I’ve been having those damn nightmares.” She exhales softly, her chest deflating. “I invented that version of you, because I couldn’t reconcile an Evelyn who would try and kill us all with the Evelyn I actually knew. The smart, funny, witty, _good_ person, who was my friend. So I invented this character. But you’re not that character.”

“Huh. So what am I?” She tries to act casual, pretend that this conversation isn’t causing her to breathe more heavily, to feel like something’s caught in her throat.

The redhead shrugs, looking tired. “Ah, I don’t know anymore. Not a monster. You’re just _you_ , and I don’t know how to explain it, but I can’t hate you. I don’t think I _ever_ hated you. I’m just always going to be confused, and a little sad.”

She can’t hold it back anymore. She blurts something she’s wanted to say all fucking night, something she wanted to say during the trial. “I was going to stop.”

Helen blinks, frowns. “Huh?”

“Before you put everything together, realized Screenslaver was me. I was going to _stop_. I was gonna retire the Screenslaver and abandon my plans for the _Everjust_. Then you found me out, and I had to do something about it, because I was screwed. So I decided to just continue with my plan. But before that, I was going to leave it all behind. I was done.”

She knows Helen hears the genuineness in her voice, because the superheroine’s mouth has opened in shock. “Wh—but _why?_ ”

_Because I had a crush on you, didn’t want to hurt you. And because I was tired._

“I don’t know, Helen. The scheme just started to seem so stupid, and I couldn’t justify it anymore. Besides, I’d been considering things, and I didn’t think I was willing to sacrifice my own life for my core beliefs anymore. I didn’t want to go to prison for this. Didn’t want to die for this.” She chuckles without humor. “Well, now I’ve gone to prison and almost died. I wish my plan had been worth it.”

She remembers seeing Helen onboard the oxygen-starved jet, dying slowly of air deprivation, struggling on her knees, and some part in the back of the inventor’s head had whispered of sorrow and regret, but she’d been drunk on rage and adrenaline at that point, and so it hadn’t mattered. Now, she feels like shit for that. For everything.

That doesn’t matter now. At the trial, she was too proud to show remorse, and her lack of apology had been rewarded with a harsh prison sentence. Not as harsh as it would’ve been if she was poor or middle-class, of course, but still. Harsh.

When Elastigirl had fought against her in that red superhero costume, it was easy enough for Evelyn to reduce her down to a super, an enemy, and thus lose all respect or humanity toward her. But now that they are having this conversation, woman to woman, casually, almost _friendly_ , almost _normal_ , she once again remembers that Helen is a person—not just _a_ person, _this_ person—and she can’t help feeling wretched.

At this point, everything in her life is just pretense. Isn't it?


	6. Holy sick divine nights

Evelyn had spent years of her life squirreling away vast amounts of her spare time, dedicating it to the development of her master plan. She’d revised and rewrote, obsessed over each detail, spent a huge amount of time developing the technology needed to execute her plot. It had been a struggle figuring out how to delicately manipulate Winston into unwittingly helping her carry out her scheme. Then, when superheroes had so explosively re-emerged into the public eye with the defeat of that giant robot, she hadn’t needed to maneuver Winston into position anymore: he’d actually suggested the idea _himself_.

Despite the fact that she’d dedicated some of her so-called “best years” (snicker) to this cause—and despite never wavering, not once, all those years—after meeting Elastigirl, there were a few mitigating factors that had very nearly led Evelyn to abandon it. She itemizes them in her mind.

1:

The look of respect and admiration on the heroine’s face, when she’d turned around on that couch during Winston’s presentation and given Evelyn an acknowledging nod.

2:

The rapport that was shared between them, the burst of adrenaline and fervor, when Evelyn had helped guide the motorcycle-riding heroine through the streets of New Urbem to chase after the runaway train. (And—despite the fact that the runaway train was of Evelyn’s own orchestration—she’d actually felt genuine excitement helping Elastigirl stop the thing. Maybe hero work is in Evelyn’s blood. Hmph. Yeah right.)

3:

The calm, relaxed air in the room when she’d had that quiet conversation with Helen after the party, with, appropriately, _The Party’s Over_ playing softly in the background. The blood had turned to honey in her veins and, before she knew it, against her own will and wishes, the flirting became real. She wasn’t faking anymore. Wasn’t manipulating anymore. She was the mouse, now.

4:

Skin on skin. Even something as simple as a handshake. It electrified her.

5:

The fact that she was an absolute _sucker_.

 

Helen doesn’t seem willing to accept what Evelyn has just told her. The superheroine is frowning. “But if you were willing to give up your plan, if you felt trapped, then why didn’t you bring that up at trial? It could’ve helped your case. The judge and jury might’ve been more lenient—it shows remorse, regret.”

“Please,” she says sarcastically, leaning back in her chair with her elbow braced on the arm, looking out over the skyline of the city she tried to attack. “I’ve never told anyone this. Not my lawyer, not my _other_ lawyer, not Winston, not a damn soul.”

“Yeah, I get that. But why?”

“Because I thought it wouldn’t make a difference, and besides, I can’t prove it. Anyway, it _doesn’t_ show remorse. I was only willing to abandon the plan because I was scared to endanger my own life. Period. I wasn’t thinking about anybody else.” She takes a long drink; the wine bottle is starting to feel lighter in her hand. “That’s not my style,” she says when she’s through.

It’s not true. She was thinking about Elastigirl.

She remembers feeling so foolish, so intoxicated. Falling for a super. Endangering everything for a fucking _super_. For one of the people she’s disdained for decades.

Now, as with everything else, she doesn’t know what to feel.

Don’t let anyone say Elastigirl isn’t perceptive. Her eyebrows are scrunched up and her mouth is pursed. “You seemed pretty willing to endanger your own life on the plane. You remember kicking me in the face when I was trying to save your life? It seemed like you _wanted_ to die.”

“Yeah, well, by then a lot of things had changed.”

“Such as…?”

“I’d been caught. There was no chance of reaching my goal. Even if my brother’s hundred-million-dollar yacht managed to crash into New Urbem, everyone would know it was _me_ behind it, not some gang of vengeful supers. I was going to jail, I was going to lose everything, and I damn well knew it. Why should I _want_ to stay alive?”

Even though Evelyn is blatantly lying about her reasons for wanting to abandon the plan, this part, at the very least, is entirely true. At the moment when that infernal baby somehow managed to remove Elastigirl’s goggles, Evelyn had instantly known it was all over. At that point, even her attempts to escape were just perfunctory, redundant. The other side had won. All thanks to an infant.

Helen remains quiet for a few seconds, processing. Then she says, “I honestly don’t know if this changes anything. It’s definitely a surprise. And I believe you. I just don’t know what to think.”

Evelyn makes a _pssh_ noise, waving her hand dismissively. “Don’t think any different of me. It was just selfish. Everything I did was selfish. I have no idea why I told you in the first place.”

“Not everything.”

“Huh?”

Helen’s giving her an oddly intense stare, one that is not easy to read. As though sizing her up. “The whole time we were working together with Winston, you were awful nice to me. Even if you were just being manipulative, you didn’t need to pretend _that_ hard. It would’ve been easy for you to simply fade into the shadows and let your brother do all the social stuff. Wouldn’t it?”

She picks at a non-existent fray on her white pants. “Yeah, I suppose it would’ve.”

“So why spend more time manipulating me when it wasn’t needed to help your plan? Just so it’d hurt more when you betrayed me? Or was it an act of unselfishness? Trying to make my last few days a little more enjoyable by being my friend? I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you or anything. I just don’t understand you. And I’m curious.”

Helen doesn’t understand her? Join the damn club. Evelyn doesn’t understand herself. “I was just trying to be as friendly as possible so you wouldn’t suspect me. Make myself trustworthy so that no one would ever dream of suspecting me of anything, at least not until after everything was done.” And that’s partially true, but she was also friendly with Helen because, of course, Helen is a very easy person to like. Know her for five minutes and you’ll feel like you grew up together.

She feels that this is another one of Helen’s big questions, the questions she came over to ask. First: _How did you end up hating supers after growing up in a family that loved them?_ And now, second: _Why were you nice to me, if you were planning to kill me all along?_

She imagines the third question will have to do with Helen’s kids. She’s not ready for that one.

Helen asks, subdued: “So none of it was real?”

Earlier, Elastigirl was so insistent that there was something to their friendship. _It was fucking real_ , she’d said with such conviction that Evelyn had believed it herself. Now, though, the heroine seems unsure.

Evelyn is about to tell a lie, but she’s fucking sick of lying, and unwittingly she blurts, “It was real. Most of it was manipulation, but it wasn’t hard to like you. _Really_ like you. It wasn’t as though I was pretending to be friends with some idiot who I hated. You’re… exceptionally tolerable.”

Helen looks surprised, but cracks a wry half-smile. “Wow, I’m flattered. _Exceptionally tolerable_. Never heard that one before.”

“Well, it’s true.” She resists the urge to take another drag of her wine bottle; her stomach is already slightly churning, and her head is light enough. “For a super, especially.”

“Yeah, well, liking _you_ wasn’t exactly a chore, either. For a faker, you sure seemed genuine. Oh, excuse me. _Partial_ faker.” She slides further down in her chair, shifting to get into a more relaxed position. It’s kind of odd, thinking that someone as malleable as Elastigirl would have to _shift_ to get comfortable. Below them, the city continues to gleam. “I have to admit something. I was kind of looking forward to our professional relationship,” she says, awkwardly and with a hint of darkness to her voice, as though she can’t believe her own idiocy. “I kind of hoped we would continue to work together. After the whole Screenslaver business was over, y’know, and our super legalization campaign too. You’d design me some kick-ass tech, and I’d let you watch through my suit camera as I used that tech on the bad guys, your voice in my ear… it would’ve been good. I guess I was an idiot.”

She can’t help the pit that forms in her stomach, and the lump that forms in her throat, as she takes in the fact that _Elastigirl_ had fantasized about a future with _her_. There’s something so thrilling about it. So fucking sad, too. Evelyn ruined something good. A lot of good things, actually. With this revelation, she’s starting to seriously wonder if her plan was ever gonna be worth it.

“Well,” she says, intending to say something self-deprecating and snarky, but a foolish choke forms in her voice, and all she can say next is, “I’m sorry about that.”

“Yeah, don’t be sorry. I guess it was always doomed.”

Able to speak again, she quickly changes the subject. This one’s too painful. “Back on the subject of tech, I’m sorry the Elasticycle met its end so early. I really enjoyed designing that for you.”

“Oh, man, I’m sorry about that too. That bike was something else. It was my own carelessness,” says Helen with a wistful smirk, remembering those events. “That whole train thing was a fiasco. I screwed up too many times to count. I suppose I was a little rusty, after fifteen years of being out of the game.”

“Nah, you did great. Winston and I were both very impressed.”

“Yeah, well, in my golden years, I would’ve stopped that train with _no_ injuries, _no_ damage, _no_ screwups, and _definitely_ no exploding Elasticycles.”

“Nobody’s perfect. We never expected you to be perfect,” Evelyn insists. “All we wanted was for you to be _sliiiiightly_ less of a destructive juggernaut than your husband. You didn’t disappoint on that front.”

“Yeah, but still. That Elasticycle…” Her voice fades, her eyes staring off into the distance with memory. “It was a spectacular piece of hardware, Evelyn. You really outdid yourself. Riding it was like a goddamn dream. I haven’t felt that free in… oh, god, probably two decades.”

“I’d design you a better one,” says Evelyn, deadpan, “if they’d let me into my workroom.”

“They’ll never do that, though. Not after…”

“After I used my power of invention for evil and nearly destroyed hundreds of lives?” She dryly laughs. “Yeah, I’m probably never gonna be allowed within a hundred yards of my workroom ever again. I guess they’re afraid I’ll invent more hypno-goggles, or something else evil.”

“I guess house arrest has been pretty hard on you,” says Helen knowingly.

“Yeah,” she admits, her hands idly playing with the neck of the wine bottle, resisting the urge to take another drink. “I’m not doing that great. There’s not much to do around here, besides read books. Books are great, but they pale in comparison to my workroom. I wanna create again, I wanna be _productive_ again. I wish I hadn’t taken my time at DevTech for granted. I’d give anything to be back there now. Being the genius behind the genius isn’t a half-bad gig. At least, not compared to this.” She lets out a long exhale, as though expunging evil spirits; she knows her breath likely smells heavily of wine. “So many ideas have been floating through my mind—tech concepts that would make Winston faint. And I can’t _do_ anything about them. It’s one of the worst things about this sentence. _That’s_ my real prison.”

“You could always describe your ideas to Winston, and he could relate them to another designer. That would help DevTech thrive, at least,” Helen suggests.

Evelyn shakes her head, with a tight smile. “Nah. I’m selfish. If I’m gonna have great ideas, either _I’m_ going to design them, or I’ll keep them to myself and they can die with me.”

Helen’s voice quiets and becomes more gentle when she asks, “Is boredom part of the reason you’re thinking about suicide?”

Evelyn starts. “Whoa. When did _that_ become a suitable topic of conversation? I thought we were being friendly now.”

“Yeah, sure we are. And friends care when other friends want to kill themselves. Remember when I said this was an intervention? That still stands.”

She’s silent for a minute, and debates not answering. It’s not any of Helen’s business, anyway. But she doesn’t _want_ to keep being so heavily-armored that she clanks when she moves. She wants to be open, honest—at least, to a certain extent. It’s probably the wine.

“Yeah. The boredom is part of it.”

“And what else?” her guest probes.

“The guilt,” she says quietly. “Knowing that I’ve hurt my brother’s business, and him personally, and a whole lot of other people. The knowledge that everybody on the damn planet hates me. The fact that my professional career is dead, and my _life_ is dead. And the fact that even though I gave up everything and hurt a lot of people, I accomplished _nothing_ out of it. Supers still got legalized, and the world still relies on them. It was all in vain, and now I don’t even know what to believe anymore. It was stupid. I did a lot of stupid shit, and now I’m suffering. It’s just karma. And yeah, sometimes I do want to die. Sometimes I fantasize about dying. Sometimes when I manage to get to sleep, I pray that I just pass while I’m conked out, and never wake up, because that’s the easiest way out. Sometimes I drink myself half into a stupor before I get into the bathtub, and I pray that I’ll pass out and drown in six inches of water, but it never fucking happens, because I guess the fates have a different plan in mind for me. I don’t know, Helen. I’m really, really tired, and everything feels pointless, and I’m—”

“Whoa, Evelyn.” Helen actually sounds shocked at the depth of Evelyn’s hopelessness, laid bare for the first time. “You need a counsellor. It’s not even a question.”

“Winston says the same thing,” she scoffs. “I keep telling him, ‘Buddy, if you bring a therapist to my house without my consent—which you’ll never get, by the way—I’ll strangle you with your own damn necktie.’ And he never does. He respects me.”

“But you do need one,” Helen insists. “You’re hurting. You’re struggling. I’m really worried about you.”

“Yeah? Don’t be. Seriously. Don’t waste your time worrying about me. I’m getting what I deserve, my just desserts. You and your family should just go on with your lives and forget I exist. I don’t want you to suffer any more because of me, and that includes _worrying_ about my dumb ass.” She means every single wretched word. It’s not a pity party; it’s just the truth.

“Evelyn… look.” Her guest speaks very softly, and Evelyn has not yet seen such a depth of compassion in this heroine’s eyes. “I’m not gonna lie to you and say I’m not the kind of person who gets joy out of revenge. I can be that person. Not that long ago, a crazed former fan of my husband’s tried to kidnap our child and got blown up in the process. I trust you remember _that_ delightful incident.”

“How could I forget?” Due to their close NSA connections, Winston and Evelyn were privy to sensitive information, including the fact that a supposed accidental aircraft crash into a residential neighborhood was, in fact, no accident—and directly involved the Incredibles.   

“Yeah. And when that happened, I gloated. I was happy. It was like this cathartic burning in my chest, knowing that smug bastard was dead and my baby was safe. He got everything he deserved. But you… I don’t feel the same about you. I _can’t_. I don’t know what it is. I can’t get any joy out of knowing that you’re in pain. In fact, it’s worse. I almost wish you had died like him—” She cuts herself off, flushing hard. “God. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

“It’s okay,” says Evelyn flatly. “Sometimes I wish the same thing.”

“But really, I didn’t mean it. I’m glad you’re alive, unharmed. But knowing that you’re suffering, that you need help and you’re not getting it—I’m not _gloating_ over that, Evelyn. And as long as I know that’s the case, I’m never going to be able to just rest easy and put you out of my mind.”

Outwardly Evelyn’s face is stone, but inside, she’s barely restraining herself from crying like an imbecile. It’s too much. All of this. It’s just too goddamn much.

She’s a hero, always has been, always will be. Vindictiveness isn’t in her blood. She’s so fucking monumentally _good_ , and Evelyn doesn’t deserve it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Angst everywhere. I can't believe I'm writing THIS much angst. I promise you eventually there will be making out.


	7. Clean out of air in my lungs

Abruptly, the electric lantern switches off, leaving them in total darkness.

Elastigirl starts; in the dark, Evelyn sees her body jerk, as though she’s assumed a defensive position. “Take it easy, Bruce Lee,” Evelyn smirks. “It’s on an automatic timer. It must be one in the morning. At least now you can see the city better.”

But Helen was already standing up, a gloomy silhouette of curves in the dark. “I don’t want to sit out here in total blackness—makes me nervous. Besides, it’s getting cold.”

“ _You’re_ afraid of the dark?” she asks incredulously. “But you’re a super.”

“Yeah, well, nobody said supers can’t have phobias. And besides, I’m _not_ afraid. I’ve just been in the dark enough times to know that I don’t have the advantage.”

“Always thinking about battles, aren’t ya?”

“Yeah, well, I like to keep on my toes. You never know what’s coming for you. Especially in the dark.” She starts moving for the door. But as she passes the wine bottle that was sitting beside her chair, her leg brushes against it, knocking it over. In what little light there is, Evelyn can see the dark stain spreading across the intricately-tiled floor.

“Ugh, dammit.” Elastigirl leans down, rights the bottle.

“Just leave it,” Evelyn says dismissively. “The stain, I mean.”

“Just _leave_ it?” Helen sounds like Evelyn has just suggested they should murder a nun.

“Well… yeah.” She shrugs. “I’ll get it tomorrow. You’re my guest. Don’t strain yourself. It’s just a small stain, and we’re going inside anyway.”

Helen makes a disgusted noise. “You have no idea how much that disgusts the _mommy_ side of me.”

The inventor snorts. “Yeah, I guess you’re used to cleaning up stains by now. After fourteen years of being a parent.”

“You wanna bet I am.” But just as it seems that Helen is going to launch into a sermon about being a mom, she stops, cutting herself off. Evelyn can see her body stiffen, if only slightly.

Yeah, she _knew_ Helen’s kids were a sore spot.

“Did you ever want kids?” Helen asks, changing the subject. Her silhouette’s arms fold, insulating her against the cold.

“Nah. Never liked ’em. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate them, they’re just not my style. I prefer adult conversation. No _goo-goo-gah-gah_ for me.” She smiles faintly. “Cute, though.”

Helen remains silent a moment. She says, “I felt the same when I was young.”

“Did you?”

“Mmm-hmm. Violet was actually an accident. Before we married, Bob and I had agreed: no kids. We wanted to focus on our careers—our day jobs _and_ our super careers, I mean. Our schedules wouldn’t exactly leave time for taking care of a child. Then, not long after our wedding, stuff started happening.”

“The lawsuits,” Evelyn says, nodding as she remembers. As a young woman finishing up her Master’s, watching the news in those precarious days, Evelyn had been delighted. Because, of course, a super ban meant that the public might _finally_ stop relying on heroes.

“Yup, the lawsuits. Then, the relocation program. When were forced underground, Bob and I were floating, for a while. We had to figure out how to balance this new chapter in our lives.” She chuckles. “We didn’t know what to do with all our free time. And then, I found out I was pregnant with Violet. She was one hundred percent an accident, but since we didn’t have our hero careers anymore, I thought: why the hell not? And I never looked back.”

Evelyn recalls Violet, a skinny, sour-faced girl of fourteen. In fact, she recalls all three of Helen’s children in striking detail. Their images bring a torrent of guilt.

She now knows without a doubt that Helen’s third question is coming.

“Violet’s smarter than either me _or_ Bob,” Helen says with a small laugh. “I mean, do you know what she said after you got arrested?”

“Mm, no. What did she say?”

“She said you wouldn’t get off with more than a slap on the wrist because you’re rich.”

“Sharp as a tack, that one,” says Evelyn flatly.

“I mean, she’s still young. She doesn’t have a full grasp on the nuances of… well, you know. She knows that the courts are lenient on the wealthy, but she doesn’t know so much about… other things. She doesn’t know that punishment sometimes goes beyond the surface.”

“No, she’s right,” says the inventor, shrugging. “I did get off way more easily than I deserved. I mean, terrorism and two hundred sixty-one counts of attempted murder? If I was anyone else, I would’ve got the death penalty.”

“And five out of those two hundred sixty-one people were my family and close friends.” The statement is emotionless, just a clear enunciation of fact. But Evelyn can clearly hear the accusation behind it. Despite the compassion she’s offered Evelyn so far tonight, Helen did come here for closure, and she’s not leaving until her questions are answered.

Evelyn decides honesty is the best policy.

“Yup.” She leans back in her chair, regarding her guest with a clear gaze. “They were. Though, considering everything, I think it’s a safe bet that you, your husband, and your youngest son might’ve survived. All of you have some level of invulnerability.”

“It wouldn’t have been any life for me,” the super says sharply. “Or Bob. You would’ve destroyed us. Not only would we likely have lost our two eldest children, but if your plan had worked, we’d be headed to prison for the rest of our lives, we’d never see our youngest again, and supers would be stigmatized like never before. So don’t think our survival would’ve been some kind of mercy.”

Cowed, Evelyn doesn’t reply. She feels titanically stupid for saying what she said.

“So,” Helen says. “Let’s cut to the chase. I may feel sorry for you, and I may not have the ability to hate you, but when I think about what you almost did to my children, I get _real_ close, Evelyn. So tell me. Why did you feel the need to involve the kids? You could’ve just left them alone.”

She knows answering with honesty is the best thing now, so she does. “I wasn’t going to bring them onto the _Everjust_. That was never my plan. I just wanted them out of the way, so they couldn’t cause any trouble. I was going to keep them locked up in one of Winston’s _numerous_ empty winter cottages. Just until everything was over.”

“And afterwards?” Helen asks. Evelyn can _hear_ the raised eyebrows in her tone. “Y’know, the kids weren’t going to stay silent. They’d tell the entire world about how you kidnapped them, and it wouldn’t’ve have taken the authorities long to put two and two together. And I know you thought of that. So what were you planning to do afterwards?”

Evelyn stares up at the undiscernible black shape that is Helen’s silhouette, getting her story straight. “I, uh…” For once she’s at a loss for words.

Her hesitation apparently tells Helen all she needs to know. The heroine steps a little closer. “Tell me what you were going to do with my kids,” she says, flames touching her voice.

For the first time that night, Evelyn is genuinely afraid that Helen might kill her.

“Erase their memories,” she blurts, cringing slightly and hoping that this admission isn’t enough to sign her death warrant.

“… _what?_ ”

“The hypnosis goggles have the function of erasing someone’s memory,” she stutters. “I was going to use them on the kids, keep them hypnotized for as long as it took to successfully complete my plan, then knock ’em out with some drug or another. They’d wake up groggy back in their house with no recollection of anything.” She hesitates, unsure whether she should say what she’s going to say next, but then goes for it. “I wasn’t going to kill them, Helen. Hell, I even instructed my… _associates_ not to harm them. At least, as much as they could help it. I don’t know exactly what you think about me or my ethics, but I’m not for _murdering children_.”

Helen remains quiet for so long that Evelyn wonders, with a spark of fear, just exactly what’s going on. Finally, the superhero speaks. “There was a very real chance you could’ve been killed during the execution of your plan, huh?”

“Yes,” she says quietly, knowing exactly where Helen is going with this.

“And you knew that. And if you’d been killed, and left my children sitting hypnotized and unable to move in one of Winston’s winter cottages or where-the-hell-ever, it might have taken weeks or months for us to find them. They would have starved where they stood. Including my _infant son_. You took that chance. Am I wrong?”

“You’re not,” Evelyn admits, feeling as though she’s on trial yet again.

“So, what was it? Was it pure evil on your part? Or did you just not care?” All traces of gentleness and compassion are gone from Helen Parr. She has become a _mother_.

Evelyn knows there’s only one thing to do at this point, or else Helen is genuinely going to strangle her. And after everything was going so well, too. “Come inside. I need to show you something.”

“No, Evelyn, you answer my fucking question or I’ll—”

She holds up a tired hand. “Elastigirl, shut up for two seconds. You’ll want to see what I have to show you. It pertains to your kids. Just come inside, wilya?”

Helen—whose body had become a human cage as she leaned over Evelyn in her fury—steps back wordlessly, allowing the inventor to rise from her chair and head for the door, with the super close behind. “This had better be very good,” says the super, her voice like a knife at Evelyn’s back. The Deavor sister doesn’t respond.

She leads Helen through the penthouse apartment to her bedroom, where she enters and flicks on the light at the side of the door. As she begins rummaging around in one of her small storage boxes that are conveniently hidden in geometric crannies in the wall beside the door, Helen enters behind her and casts a long glance around the room. “You live like this?” asks the heroine with contempt.

Yeah, yeah, Evelyn’s heard it all from Winston before. Wine stains on the floor, wine bottles strewn here and there, tossed-aside clothes messing every surface, and so forth. It’s a mess that Evelyn doesn’t have the energy to clean. “Yup. I live like this. This is my life. Splendid, isn’t it?”

She’s sifting through various papers in the wicker storage box, and she finally comes across what she’s looking for: a sheet of binder paper, three-holed, covered with her scrawling handwriting. Messier than usual, because of the mental state she was in when she wrote it. She turns around, still crouching, and shifts into a cross-legged position on the floor as she holds the paper up towards Helen. “Read. Aloud.”

Helen takes the paper in her hands, frowning as her eyes trace the words. “ _Hey, brother. I don’t have time to explain exactly what’s going on, but this is important. If I passed away recently in a yachting accident, you need to head to your house in Avalon. You’ll find something worth saving there. Three somethings, actually. Go as soon as possible. They’re perishable. Love you so, so much. Evelyn_.”

She glances down at Evelyn, her expression unreadable.

Evelyn breaks the silence, leaning back on her hands and regarding Elastigirl almost smugly. “I may be a monster, but I’m not _that_ big of a monster. I left that note in my brother’s kitchen. He would have retuned home after the accident and discovered it within ample time to save your kids.”

“Winston saw this note?”

“After I was arraigned, yes. He gave it back to me later, without even speaking. His way of asking for an explanation. I didn’t give him one, and he didn’t pry.” She exhales. “I really don’t deserve him.”

“And if Winston died in this ‘yachting accident’ too? What was your plan then?” Helen asks, stone-cold.

“Winston was not going to die,” says Evelyn quietly. “At least, not if I could’ve helped it. From the get-go, my plan was to evacuate him before there was ever any real danger.”

“And yourself, I’m presuming.” Despite the revelation, Helen doesn’t sound too impressed.

“And myself,” the inventor admits. “I never actively wanted to die for this cause. Not unless it was absolutely inevitable. But, and here’s the key thing, I didn’t want your kids to die either. I just wanted them safely out of my way. Please don’t strangle me,” she adds, sheepishly and perhaps in vain.

“Relax. I’m not gonna strangle you. At least, right now I’m not considering it.”

Evelyn’s hand flies dramatically to her neck. “Oh, what a relief.”

“I’m not impressed by what you did with my kids,” says the heroine, and from her black tone of voice, Evelyn can tell she really, really means it. “Going after them _at all_ is bad enough. Putting them in very real danger of being forgotten and starving to death… that’s a line that even you shouldn’t have crossed. And I hope you feel like shit about it, every single day for the rest of your life. I really do, Evelyn.”

“They were loose ends,” says Evelyn softly with a shrug, her honesty briefly outweighing her fear of being strangled. “That’s all I was thinking about. But Helen… you’re gonna get your wish. I’m going to feel like shit about everything for the rest of my life, especially that. You can bank on it. It was a horrible, selfish thing to do.”

“Well, at least you can recognize that.” She thrusts the paper back toward Evelyn, and the inventor takes it, placing it back into the wicker basket beside her without her eyes ever leaving the super’s.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, with total honesty. “I don’t know what else I can say. I’m just sorry.”

She knows Helen is seeing her beloved children’s faces in her mind, counting them, thinking about her history with each of them, a history that Evelyn can never begin to understand.

To her surprise, Elastigirl seems to soften, her shoulders losing some of their tension. “I know you’re sorry,” she says. “I know.”

Evelyn unsteadily rises to her feet, and for a few moments the women just look at each other, each weighing the other. “I’m gonna go get more wine,” Evelyn says, making finger guns at the door. “You can join me if you want. God knows we both need it.”

She’s acting casual again, but inside, she’s praying to every god she knows that Helen doesn’t hate her now. That she hasn’t lost everything she thought she’d gained in the past hour. A world where Helen doesn’t despise her might be a world that’s worth living in.

She steps past Helen, going off into the living room and the kitchen beyond, where she pours herself a glass of Chardonnay from a fresh bottle; the floor’s still sticky from her spill. She, perhaps presumptuously, pours a second glass out for Helen. If Elastigirl doesn’t show up, Evelyn can just drink it herself.

When she settles down on a couch, Helen isn’t there yet. A minute later, she shows up, entering the living room and crossing her arms. “You really don’t need to drink any more tonight, do you?”

“I can hold my liquor,” she says calmly with a shrug. “How ’bout you? Ready for another glass?”

“I’d better not,” she shakes her head.

Having already drained half of her own glass, Evelyn is feeling drunker. When she gets drunk, she feels a little numb, feels a pleasant buzz in her head, and she might sway a little, but she never becomes stupid. In fact, her mind just gets clearer. “Is your husband expecting you back at home?” she asks pointedly, lifting an eyebrow and displaying a knowing smirk.

“Yes, in fact, he is. And I’m already so late.” She exhales, puts her hands on her hips.

“Well, there’s nothing you can do about it, is there.” She waves the other Chardonnay glass in the air. “Might as well have fun while you’re here.”

Helen presses her lips together and Evelyn can clearly imagine what she’s thinking: _Have fun with you, who nearly killed my children?_ But she doesn’t say any such thing. Instead, the hero just shakes her head, sighs, and heads over to the couch, sinking down at the farthest end from her gracious host.

“No alcohol,” she says, waving away the glass that Evelyn attempts to hand to her. “I’ve already had more than enough for one… _month_.”

The former tech maven shrugs and places the extra glass on a nearby coffee table. “Speak for yourself.”

“You drink like a fish,” says Helen, a slight frown marring her eyebrows. “Have you always been this way?”

She takes a gulp of Chardonnay, just for the comedic timing. “I’ve always liked the finer drinks in life, yeah. Not like this, though. Lately I’ve been thirstier than ever.”

“Does it numb you?” asks the redheaded hero, her expression unreadable.

Evelyn shrugs, feeling hollow. “Not enough.”

After a moment of silence, her guest says, “I’m trying to stay out of bad habits. It’s tempting to break out the wine and drink like crazy. Some nights, one glass just isn’t enough. Some nights I have to ask Bob to hide the bottle from me.”

The admission hurts Evelyn more than she would ever admit. “Does it numb _you?_ ” she asks, echoing Helen’s words.

Helen seems to skirt the question, staring across the room at a modern square-shaped clock on the wall instead of meeting her host’s eyes. “Like I told you before, I have nightmares. The most common one, I’m standing on the beach, watching the _Everjust_ zoom toward the city. It’s so much bigger in my dreams. The size of a meteor. And I can see my kids on the top deck, screaming for my help. I’m stretching for them, trying my best to grab them off the ship before it crashes, but I…” Resting on the couch at her side, her fist clenches tightly, perhaps unconsciously. “I just can’t stretch far enough to reach them. The ship crashes. I find their bodies. I keep wishing the dream will end before I find the bodies, but no, it never does. And it seems _so_ realistic… I can see every strand of Violet’s hair. Dash looks like I could reach out and touch him and feel his skin under my hand. The baby… Jack-Jack is…”

She can’t finish her sentence. Evelyn strongly feels like she’s witnessing something she shouldn’t see, a door that Helen would never open in front of Evelyn if she wasn’t at least slightly drunk. Unable to keep looking, she casts her gaze somewhere else, focusing on the frayed edges of the shag rug under the glass coffee table. “That’s a doozy,” she mutters, awkward, but the only thing she can think to say.

“So what I’m trying to say,” says Helen suddenly, “is yeah. It does numb me. When I drink, I don’t have those dreams. I can sleep peacefully. I’m trying my best to be strong—for Bob, for the kids. And it’s so silly and stupid, anyway. I’ve faced much more frightening threats.” She scoffs lightly. “No offense, but I’m not gonna spend the rest of my life having bad dreams because of _you_.”

“I _am_ a pretty stupid subject to have nightmares about,” mutters the inventor before taking another long draught from her glass.

“But,” says Helen, darkly thoughtful, “I only ever have nightmares about my children. My kids on the _Everjust_ , or sometimes, being threatened by Buddy’s robot. So maybe it’s not _you_ I’m afraid of.”

Evelyn runs an idle finger around the slick rim of her glass, feeling its coolness under her skin. “You’re a mother. When you were a super, your job was to protect everyone. When you became a mother, your job shrunk. Now you’re tasked with protecting just three people. And it’s much harder, because you love those three people half to fucking death and you still can’t protect them. When they’re in even the smallest danger, your heart stops. And they’ve been in danger so huge that most people would swoon to even think about it. And you’ve watched them being in that danger. You’ve felt helpless, stupid. It’s the worst kind of vulnerability, I’m guessing. Watching your own offspring endure life-threatening danger and not being able to do anything to save them. Realizing they’ve got to save themselves.” She glances up at Helen from hooded eyes. “That’s your nightmare.”

As someone who has never actually _been_ a mother, she’s just guessing what Helen feels. From the stricken expression on the super’s face, Evelyn guesses she’s hit the bullseye.

“You sure know a lot about motherhood for a childless career woman,” Helen finally says.

She shrugs, lifting her glass slightly so she can watch the light dimly dance and sparkle over the liquid’s amber surface. “I’m just perceptive.”

“I thought you _never knew what people wanted_. You painted yourself as clueless about other people, but you seem to be awful good at reading _me_. Was that just another one of your lies?”

“It’s true,” she says, suddenly defensive. “I don’t particularly like people, and I’m definitely not good at reading them. That’s why Winston is the PR guy, and I just lurk in the shadows. He _knows_ human beings. What’s under their skin, what makes them tick, how to make them laugh, how to make them want to invest. Me? I’m no closer to understanding other people than I am to understanding myself.” She snorts. “If _I_ was the public face of DevTech, we’d be bankrupt by now, judging by how personable I am.”

“But you just read me like a book,” insists the super, scowling. “And you’ve been reading me like a book since the first second I met you. It’s _frustrating_.”

She opens her mouth, ready to retort, then shuts it again. Helen’s right.

Why? Well, maybe it’s because she finds Helen so interesting to read. It’s like all the other books in the world are—oh, who knows—children’s picture books or something. Of course Evelyn can’t read their intricacies: they’re too boring to bother. But Helen comes along, the world’s most fascinating manual of futuristic technology, beautifully-illustrated, densely-detailed…

Too late the Deavor sister, in her drunkenness, realizes she just said all that stuff out loud.

The superheroine is blinking at her. “Oh,” she says. “Huh.”

She ducks her head and feels herself flush, mortified like a schoolgirl. “Ignore me,” she mutters. “I say stupid stuff when I’m hammered.”

It’s enough, for the inventor’s purposes, that Helen simply knows that she’s guilty, she’s regretful, and that she really did—even if only for a short time—consider Elastigirl a friend. The idea of the hero finding out about the breadth of Evelyn’s feelings for her? Humiliating, totally unthinkable. She prides herself on being cold and intelligent at all times, and every time she sees this one person, she almost comes undone. That’s embarrassing as hell. Never mind the fact that she almost ruined Helen’s life, almost killed her kids, that she’s the object of Helen’s hatred. She needs to keep her foolish emotions closer to the chest, even if she _is_ wasted. She usually has a better control over her tongue than this, anyhow, no matter how drunk.

Maybe, subconsciously, she just wanted to say it. Even if only in that veiled form. Even if only this once.


	8. The fantasies of leaving

 

For a miniscule moment, Evelyn registers some odd emotion on the heroine’s face, something unplaceable. It’s gone as soon as it arrived. “A fascinating manual of futuristic technology, huh,” says the heroine flatly. “First I’m ‘exceptionally tolerable,’ now I’m a _manual_. You sure know how to charm a lady.”

Evelyn sputters, briefly losing her cool. “I didn’t mean—”

“Yeah, I know you weren’t trying to insult me.” The heroine tilts her head to the side and smirks, a _tch_ noise, and something about the sharp curve of her nose and the point of her chin, as displayed in the odd incandescence from the nearby lamp, makes the inventor’s stomach drop. “It’s just, you’ve got an odd way of being nice to people.”

“Not people, just you.” As soon as the words are out of her mouth, she wishes she hadn’t said them, which is becoming a pretty common experience tonight.

The heroine glances at her. “I’m not thirsting for flattery—really, I’m not—but I don’t understand. I’m sure you’ve met all kinds of fascinating people from all over the world during your career. And _I’m_ the only one you’ve met that doesn’t bore you?”

Evelyn struggles with her words, really wishing Helen hadn’t opted to continue this line of conversation. She’s glad there’s only one lamp in the room; the lack of light might disguise her heated face. “I don’t know what it is about you,” she finally says with all the subtlety of an elephant in heat. “Yeah, people can be interesting, but I’m not invested in reading them like I am with you. I don’t care deeply about how they think, about what makes them tick, like I do about you.” She holds up her hands in surrender, an awkward, self-deprecating laugh covering for her embarrassment; she’s way too drunk to reasonably navigate this conversation. “Don’t ask me to tell you what’s different, because I’ve got nothing.”

Her guest doesn’t speak for quite a long time, staring at the opposite wall, expression marred by a slight frown, but otherwise unreadable. In the meantime, Evelyn takes another long drink, draining her glass. She’s gonna need it.

“I don’t understand,” says Helen, still frowning, still not looking at Evelyn. “Is that why you targeted me, chose me instead of Bob? Because you thought I was _interesting?_ ”

“Nah, that was all you. You’re genuinely less destructive than him—the numbers don’t lie.” She makes a short bark of a laugh. “Although you _are_ more interesting than him. By a long shot. Hell, I don’t think anybody would disagree about that.”

Elastigirl glances at her sharply. “Don’t insult my husband.”

“I—I wasn’t—”

“You _were_ , though. Cut it out.”

“But it’s true,” Evelyn argues, too drunk to _not_ argue. “C’mon, the guy’s a bumbling ignoramus. You married a bumbling ignoramus. Embrace it.”

Helen gives her a hard, hard stare. “I always thought you had contempt towards Bob. Now, I know it for sure. I won’t tolerate it, Evelyn. This has been a surprisingly decent evening so far, given the circumstances, but I will _not_ put up with insults against my husband.”

“Yeah, but—”

Helen’s hand jerks up, a clear _shut up_ motion. “Save it. Okay?”

“Don’t you remember,” she plows on, the Chardonnay stripping away the last of her inhibition, “that night we first met? When Win told Mr. Incredible that he wasn’t getting the job? And don’t you remember all the stupid shit he said? About you being a ‘credit to your sex’ and so forth? ‘Heavyweight problems, heavyweight solutions?’” She sits back against the arm of the couch, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know Bob very well, but from what I’ve seen, he’s a meat-headed, chauvinistic bore. I dare you to deny it.”

She’s spoken her mind too freely and too much, at last. The fist flies across the couch before she even sees it. She registers a blow across her chin, a fleshy smacking noise. The surprise stops the pain from setting in, at least for a moment.

Helen’s sitting there, fist curled, arm still a little more stretched than a normal woman’s would be. She’s scowling hard. “I warned you to shut up.”

Evelyn rubs her chin where she was struck, lip curving into a sneer. For a moment, anger and indignation outweigh any need for apologies. “Hey, if you can’t handle the heat, then get out of the kitchen, sister. You know me. You know I only speak the truth.”

“You only speak your own twisted, ignorant version of the truth. That’s what you mean. You know nothing about Bob. _Jack. Shit_.”

Evelyn knows she is making a mistake, and a bad one, by coming for Helen’s family. But now, the train is rolling down the tracks, and there’s no stopping it. “Am I wrong, though, Helen? Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me with a straight face that your husband _wasn’t_ jealous of your success. Tell me that he _didn’t_ think it was unfair for him, a man, to be passed over in favor of a woman. That he’s _not_ an egotistical loser who thinks he’s god’s gift to women and the world. Because that’s what I saw that night. But hey, if I’m wrong, feel free to correct me by punching me again.”

She doesn’t know exactly what she’s trying to convince Helen of, and no matter what, it seems like Helen remains unconvinced. Her expression is fiery. “Okay, I’ll tell you. With a _straight face_. None of those things are true. Believe what you want about me, Evelyn, but do you really believe I’d marry some narcissistic asshole, and let him father my children? That’s not who Bob is. I’ve spent twenty years with him, fifteen as his wife. He’s caring, thoughtful, loving, smart, funny, he adores the kids, he adores me, and I adore him. What you saw that night—that was more complicated than just Bob being a chauvinist or whatever the fuck you want to believe about him. That was the result of _decades_ of Bob being suppressed from being himself, denied the chance to do hero work, forced underground and treated like a criminal. He was eager for the chance to work for you and your brother, and he got denied, so he was disappointed. And _I don’t fucking blame him_. Believe whatever the hell you want, whatever facts you’ve invented in that little fantasy world inside your head, Evelyn. It doesn’t make a difference. I know Bob and you don’t, end of story. You don’t know anything.” With her speech over, the hero rises abruptly from her side of the sofa and stalks to the doorway, exiting the living room.

By now, all of Evelyn’s anger has faded—along with the sting of Helen’s blow against her face—and she just feels a sinking disappointment. “Hey, Helen. Wait,” she calls after the retreating woman, but Helen doesn’t answer, and she’s gone.

Once again, the inventor feels the searing absence of Helen’s body in the room, of the warmth that she always brings. Evelyn is such an _idiot_.

“Wait!” she calls louder, rising from the couch herself. She follows the heroine out of the room, goes down a hallway until she finds Helen at the front door, crouched down next to it. Apparently preparing to make her exit.

“I should’ve done this hours ago,” the redhead snaps without even looking at Evelyn, using her superpowers to flatten herself unnaturally against the floor: legs first, travelling upwards across her body. “I should’ve known talking with you couldn’t bring anything good.”

Evelyn tries to keep herself cool, because showing emotion is what keeps getting her in trouble in the first place. “Hey, look, you don’t have to go yet. Things were just getting spicy.”

This just earns her a dagger-sharp glare from the super.

“Look, _please_.” Her voice cracks. She knows she’s not going to be able to keep herself from showing some cracks in the armor, tonight. She’s too drunk, too desperate, too lonely.

Helen stops flattening. At this point, she’s flat like a sheet up to her neck; only her head is 3D, resting on the floor. Under any other circumstance, it would be a ridiculously funny sight. “ _What?_ ” snaps the heroine.

“I just… I’m sorry for everything that I said, I… I’m a idiot. You know I’m an idiot. I just, I… I’m a _jealous_ idiot,” she admits, rubbing the back of her neck and staring down at the artisanal wood floor below her feet, face burning hard. “I don’t hate your husband. Hell, I hardly know the guy. I guess I was just projecting. I was thinking that nobody could be good enough for you. There have been times, y’know… like when we talked after the party… that I wished to Christ you weren’t married so that I could take you home. And there have been times when I looked at your husband and I just thought, _I wish I was him_. But I _don’t_ wish I was him, because I could never be him, because I’m _me_. I’m not sweet, I’m not marriage material, I’d be _shit_ with your kids… But still. I’ve been jealous,” she tapers off awkwardly, still not meeting Helen’s eyes. She wants nothing more than to run the hell away from this room and this situation, but she’s under house arrest and there’s only so far she can go.

There’s a quiet suction-y sound as Elastigirl detaches herself from the floor and turns back into a three-dimensioanl woman again, tilting her head to the side, with mouth slightly open, and looking at Evelyn as though the inventor has just said, _Guess what, I just invented time travel, want to have a look?_

“Well,” says the redhead, “you managed to take me home, at least.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then can’t stifle a nervous giggle. Which is funny, because she’s not sure she’s ever giggled in her life.

“Evelyn, I…” Helen looks conflicted, opening her mouth then closing it, pressing her lips together hard, as she figures out how to respond. “…I knew there was something there. I mean, the way we talked, it was flirty, I’m not too blind to see that much, but…”

As long as Evelyn is spending the night blurting stupid stuff, she might as well keep the streak going. “It was because of you that I almost stopped the plan,” she admits. “I didn’t anticipate you. I didn’t anticipate there would be a super that I wouldn’t want to hurt.”

“But you _did_ hurt me.”

“Jesus,” she explodes like a petulant baby, “how many times do I have to say I’m sorry before it finally sinks in that I’m _really fucking sorry_? I would take it back if I could. I would take every single second back. I disown the plan. I disown all of it. It wasn’t worth it. Not if I could have spent the rest of my miserable life having a professional relationship with you. Designing tech for you, watching you catch bad guys with it. That would’ve been enough.”

“You said a second ago you wanted to marry me,” points out Helen, and is the inventor imagining things, or did the super’s face turn slightly red with the words?

“Yeah, well, clearly that was never going to happen,” Evelyn scoffs, leaning back against the wall behind her; a coat hook sticks into her back, which she pretends not to notice. “I had to settle for what was possible, right?”

“Marriage could never have happened, no. I’m married to one man, the father of my children, and I’m planning to stick by him for the rest of my life. But…” She steps forward, towards the inventor. Only slightly. But noticeably. “We’ve had an agreement for nearly two decades, Bob and me.”

A lump forms in Evelyn’s throat as she realizes what’s about to come next. “An agreement, huh?” she asks sarcastically, masking it.

“Yup. We can both see other people, as long as we introduce each other to our new partners. Bob’s only exercised the rule once. And I _never_ have. But with you.” She ends the sentence there, a flat break.

“With me,” Evelyn repeats, the coat hook still prying uncomfortably into her back.

“I had some thoughts,” says Helen bluntly.

Oh, Jesus. How is this worse than anything else? Worse than the prison sentence, than the pain she’s caused her brother or any other person on the planet, worse than the fact that the whole world hates her. This is worse.

“So we might’ve become something,” she says with no emotion. “If I hadn’t…”

“If you hadn’t turned out to be evil, yes. I liked you. From the second I met you. I felt something with you that I haven’t felt with anybody in a _very_ long time,” admits the hero, clear eyes meeting the inventor’s gaze; her face is red. “And then all this happened.”

Huh.

“No chance of being your free pass tonight, huh?” she asks with biting wit, covering up the turmoil and fury she feels with herself.

“Oh, Evelyn.” The heroine actually smiles, though there’s sadness behind it. “You’re too drunk, sweetie. It wouldn’t be fair.”

She senses pity in Elastigirl’s words and her face, and that sets her off, another wave of fury rising in her—fury that things had to be like this, above all else. “Haven’t I told you enough times that I don’t want your _fucking_ pity,” she snarls.

“Yeah, well, you’re going to get it anyway,” snaps the heroine, “because I can’t help it. I can’t help pitying you and feeling a million other things too, and just regretting that everything had to turn out like _this_. You did some evil things, but that’s not the only reason I can’t get you out of my godforsaken head, and I wish I could hate you, but I _can’t_.”

“So what are you going to do?” Evelyn stares at her hard, challenging her. “You’ve gotta do something about all this shit. Are you going to punch poor defenseless Evelyn again, or are you going to slink under that door like a coward? Do one or the other. Because I’m sick of hearing about how I’m ruining your fucking l—”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no, what happened? Could it be... making out?


	9. My hips have missed your hips

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You already know what it is!

It’s not like in those annoying romance movies Winston loves so much, that he forces her to watch with him all the time, where she always ends up fetching the tissues for him as he weeps. In those movies, when one person cuts off another’s rant with a kiss, it’s a passionate and frenzied thing. Apparently Helen doesn’t play like that. She steps forward in a smooth motion, having made her choice, and before Evelyn can even comprehend what’s happening, her next words are being swallowed down by a kiss. She makes a muffled noise, too indignant to react. At first.

Helen is so gentle: her mouth is gentle, the hand slipped behind Evelyn’s head to tangle in her short hair is gentle, the hand at her waist is light and soft. But within moments, despite the non-intensity it all, the inventor has completely melted. She doesn’t make any more attempts to speak, but she doesn’t try to touch Helen, either. She just stands there and takes it, unmoving, hands still braced against the wall behind her. She’s gone totally numb.

When the hero withdraws, all she can think is: _Oh_.

“I wanted to do that for a long time,” says Helen quietly, “and I figured, what better way to shut you up?”

Evelyn doesn’t have a witty response at hand, for once. She just stares dumbly.

“Now I kind of want to do it again.” The heroine sounds like a nervous teenager.

The inventor blinks, once, twice. “Um,” she says, disappointed at how choked and raw her voice is. “But what about your free pass? Aren’t you supposed to… introduce me to Bob?”

“Ah, he’s met you before,” whispers Helen with a smoldering half-smile that makes her host instantly flare with involuntary heat. She leans in for another kiss. Evelyn doesn’t try to stop her. Even she isn’t _that_ big of an idiot.

Helen’s breath tastes like wine. Oh, and her lips are softer than silk. Those are the inventor’s most prominent impressions. The kiss is quite gentle at first, once again, but then the hero deepens it, turns it rougher. Her body presses Evelyn’s against the wall, forcing the inventor to lift her hands. At first she just holds them up, stupidly, because she doesn’t quite have the nerve to touch her yet. But Helen’s hands are on her waist, and then smoothing the fabric of her black shirt, upwards towards her breasts, tantalizingly, and then back down, and then one hand goes up to curl in her hair again, and unexpectedly pulls her head back for easier access to her neck, because that’s where Helen is headed next.

“Ah, Jesus…” She can’t help making a strangled noise as the hero’s mouth closes at the skin just below her jaw, and something primal calls for her to put her hands on Helen, finally. On her ample hips, at first, pulling them closer.

“Jesus, yes, _touch_ me,” murmurs Helen against her skin. The hero’s red hair is in Evelyn’s face, and she presses a kiss to the top of Helen’s head, closing her eyes. Distantly she wonders if this is a dream or a stupid drunken fantasy, because there’s no way it’s actually happening.

Helen trails a stream of kisses up her neck, to the other side of her jaw, across her jawline, up to her sharp-boned cheek, across to her mouth again, where they kiss more deeply than before, tongues tangling together. She tastes so strongly of wine, and in the back of her head, Evelyn realizes that Helen is _at least_ as drunk as she is. But then, Helen pushes hard against Evelyn, pressing her hard into the sharp coat hook, and Evelyn cries out and instinctively shoves Helen; she stumbles a few feet away, where she remains, staring wide-eyed at Evelyn and breathing hard.

“I’m sorry,” Helen says quickly. “I didn’t mean—”

By god, Evelyn isn’t going to ruin this. She steps aside quickly, displaying the coat hook. “You nearly gave me impromptu back surgery,” says the inventor dryly, but her chest is heaving and she can’t look away from Elastigirl.  

“Sorry about that,” says Helen breathlessly, cracking a smile. “I’ll leave the surgery to the professionals.”

“You can perform surgery on me anytime you want, Elastigirl.” She means to be sultry, but she just ends up sounding stupid. “Uh, sorry, that came out wrong.”

Every part of her body is pleasantly humming, a buzz that she can’t get from alcohol—it’s too strong, too sweet, too full of fire. Helen is a drug. A very potent one.

And the idea that despite everything, Helen would want her like that, would kiss her _like that_ , is almost too much to bear.

Helen is doubting herself, Evelyn can see it in her face. “I’m not myself,” says the heroine, looking foolish and colored bright red. “I’m sorry. If that was too much…”

Evelyn doesn’t get a lot of chances to experience purely good things, not anymore. She’s not letting this moment slip from her reach. She moves over to Elastigirl, putting hands on her waist, curling her fingers in the fabric of the other woman’s shirt, and pulls Helen toward her until they’re flush against each other; Helen offers no resistance.

“Let me assure you. It wasn’t anywhere near too much,” she murmurs, her lips only a hair’s breadth away from Helen’s own mouth.

Helen doesn’t reply, but doesn’t close the gap, either. She slides her arms around Evelyn’s back, warm hands settling between her sharp shoulder blades. “I don’t know what the hell to think about you,” she quietly says, her breath hot on Evelyn’s mouth as she speaks.

“Now you know how I feel,” she responds.

Helen chuckles breathlessly. “Yeah, I bet I _am_ pretty confusing to a principled gal like you. A super who isn’t a jerk. Who would’ve thought?”

“You’re an oxymoron.” She tilts her head, the perfect angle for a kiss, but doesn’t. Both of them are going insane.

This time Evelyn breaks the tension, leaning forward just that one extra half-inch. Mouth meets mouth yet again. Their lips move in synchronicity, and Helen tilts her own head to deepen it even further, until they’re all but eating each other alive. Impatient to hear her moan, Evelyn nips at Helen’s lower lip with her teeth, and is rewarded with a guttural sound from Helen’s throat.

To her surprise, Helen instantly withdraws; but from the fire in her eyes, Evelyn instantly knows that her withdrawal isn’t due to regret. “We’d better take this to the bedroom, or the couch, or, I dunno, somewhere.”

“You wanna get me vertical?” she playfully mumbles, leaning forward to brush her mouth against Helen’s collarbone, her finger hooking in the neckline of Helen’s turtleneck and pulling it downward to gain access to said collarbone.

“That’s my favorite shirt,” Helen says, but she doesn’t sound too bothered.

In response, Evelyn pulls the neck down even further, as far as it’ll go, and hears a quiet, fabric-y ripping sound. “Too bad.”

“I’ll pay you back,” Helen promises darkly, and with no further words, she weaves her fingers with Evelyn’s own and insistently pulls her down the hall, towards the vicinity of the bedroom.

 

True to her word, the heroine does end up paying Evelyn back. Once they’re in the dimly-lit bedroom with the door snicked shut behind them, she pushes Evelyn—not hard, but not too softly, either—against the wall, entangling her fingers into the spaces between the buttons on Evelyn’s shirt. With a fierce pull, they scatter everywhere, clattering against the ground.

“Shit, my shirt,” says Evelyn hollowly, trying to disguise just how goddamn turned on she is. “You _owe_ me.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

Inwardly, a spark of fear has begun to shine in Evelyn. She’s _so_ fucking skinny, and she hopes Helen won’t comment on that. If there’s one thing Evelyn needs no more of tonight, it’s pity. To her gratefulness, Helen _doesn’t_ comment. She pushes herself flush against Evelyn against the wall, another kiss searing the both of them. Still pressed against her, Helen slides downward, until she’s got her mouth against Evelyn’s chest, kissing all the bare skin that isn’t covered by Evelyn’s rather unfashionable brassiere. With her mouth between Evelyn’s breasts, she reaches up without even looking and pushes the inventor’s shirt off her shoulders entirely. It falls to the floor in a heap around her feet.

“Jesus Christ,” Evelyn moans as Helen’s lips skirt the very edge of where brassiere covers breast.

Helen laughs languidly against her skin. “We haven’t even got to the good part yet.”

Her mouth moves slowly down Evelyn’s chest and stomach, making no comment about the bony, protruding ribs. Every touch she administers is perfect. She’s absolutely fucking perfect. Once again, Evelyn has to wonder if she’s dreaming.

“Uh, Helen…” She doesn’t finish her sentence as Helen’s fingers curl into her waistband, ghosting back and forth until they finally pull her pants all the way down.

“Yeah, say my name. Just like that.” She presses her face against Evelyn’s underwear, the sharp point of her nose and softer shapes of her mouth, and stares up at Evelyn with those big brown eyes, and Evelyn entirely loses the ability to think coherently. She just says, “Helen,” yet again, obeying like a good girl.

When Helen slowly gets back up and kisses Evelyn again, slowly like honey dripping down from the dipper, and teasing her bottom lip between her teeth, Evelyn briefly breaks away to say, “You know, I didn’t even know your name before today.”

“Hmm? You didn’t?”

“No, I just knew you as Elastigirl.”

“You can say that too, if you want,” Helen replies with a smirk. “I don’t mind.”

Evelyn returns the smirk, even though her head’s swimming, as well as a few other places. “Elastigirl.” She holds the word in her mouth like a candy.

With that, she pushes back a little; sure, it’s easy enough to let Helen do all the work, but hell, Evelyn wants to have her say, too. She gently disentangles herself from Helen, pushing her away, just slightly, gently enough to know that she’s still wanted. “I’m tired of standing up. Get on the bed.”

Helen raises an eyebrow. “Bossy.” But she obeys, stepping back without ever breaking Evelyn’s gaze until the backs of her legs brush against the bed. A wine bottle clinks under her feet. She doesn’t comment on it.

She sits down on the bed, staring at Evelyn with half-closed eyes and that goddamn smile. Leaning backwards, with hands braced on the mattress, legs spread slightly, okay, more than slightly…

Evelyn gets the distinct impression that Helen likes to be lusted after. And holy shit, it’s working.

She goes over, slowly, as though disinterested. She stands over Helen, staring down for a moment, watching the redhead look right back up at her. Her hands lightly brush over Helen’s shoulders, and she can’t help but smile just slightly, because despite the lust that’s dominated the past few minutes, the core of the matter is this: she’s in love with this woman. It’s not just the curves of Helen’s body, something as simple as that (though that damn well helped). It’s everything. It’s the electricity between them, the fact that she could talk to her for hours and never get bored, the fact that Elastigirl is one of the smartest, best people that the inventor has ever had the distinct pleasure of meeting.

And, sour in her mouth, is this: the fact that this is so fragile. Any second now, the bubble could break, because Evelyn is still a criminal, and Helen is still the mother and wife of four people who almost died at Evelyn’s hand.

Helen doesn’t seem to be regretting her decision so far, though. She smiles up at her, eyes half-shut. “What are you thinking about?”

“You,” she answers honestly, with a laugh. “What else is there to think about?”

“Think about this,” Helen says with a mischievous grin, and with a series of deft movements she’s pulled the inventor down onto the bed and is hanging overtop of her, calves on either side of her hips, and leaning down to kiss her, and as they kiss, Evelyn reaches up to pull Helen’s shirt over her head, the kiss only breaking so she can complete said action. She’s not disappointed by what she sees as she tosses the shirt away.

Helen apparently misinterprets the look on Evelyn’s face. “Hey, don’t judge me. Three kids, you get a little saggy.”

“Jesus. I’m not judging you. _Jesus_. Come here.” She pulls Helen closer toward her so she can reach around her back, fumbling with the miniscule hooks on the superhero’s brassiere, but Helen kisses her, and she stops her efforts to entangle her fingers in the hero’s red hair, mussing it thoroughly. Unable to stop herself, her hands rove down Helen’s back, grasping her hips, her ass, the places she’s wanted to touch since forever.

Helen apparently can’t wait much longer. Her hand maneuvers between them, sliding into the inventor’s underwear, between her legs. Oh, Jesus. Fuck. Helen isn’t really doing much of anything yet, and yet Evelyn’s hands still fly to her sides, clenching hard into the fabric of the sheets below her.

Helen presses another kiss onto her, laughing into her mouth. “I _thought_ you were high-strung.”

“I’m not high-st—oh, fuck—” Helen’s fingers, probably aided by her superpowers, are doing some very interesting things, and Evelyn is already white-knuckled. “Okay, maybe a little,” she gasps.

“Just a little?”

“ _Fuck_ … yeah, a lot…”

“Thought so,” Helen murmurs, and to Helen’s disappointment she removes her hand. She takes a second to suck her fingers clean (Evelyn breathes a little more shallowly at the sight), and then moves down between her legs, deftly slipping the underwear away. She kneels there, and looks up at Evelyn, not smiling anymore.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” she manages to say, still trying to be cold and cool, because she hasn’t learned her lesson, but by now she’s thoroughly broken. “Peachy.”

“Mmm.” With that, Helen gets to work, and she clearly knows exactly what she’s doing, because Evelyn has never come this hard in her life.


	10. Can we keep up with the ruse?

Evelyn Deavor’s king-sized bed is large enough that Evelyn and Helen could feasibly lie on either side without touching. They don’t.

After it’s over—and it takes several delicious hours to be over—Evelyn half-expects her super companion to realize what a mistake she’s made, and flee the penthouse, never to return. It’s not like that course of action wouldn’t make sense, either. So even while they’re fucking, Evelyn is preparing herself for it.

It doesn’t happen. After they’re both spent, Helen lies curled beside her, legs entangled with her own, head pressed into her chest; some of her flyaway red hairs are tickling the inventor’s nose, not a situation she feels inclined to complain about. The covers are halfway pulled over them, in a half-assed effort.

“Sorry. Afraid I don’t make a very good pillow,” Evelyn jokes, staring up at the ceiling above them.

“You’re fine,” Helen murmurs, turning her head so that she’s speaking into the space below Evelyn’s breasts but above her stomach, her voice sending vibrations into the skin. “I’ve had worse pillows. In motels and stuff. In this one dive, oh, man—the pillows were stuffed with newspaper. _Newspaper_ , Evelyn.”

“A disgrace,” she says, deadpan.

“Yeah.” She nestles herself closer, shifting into a more comfortable position. “At least you’re warm.”

“Oh, is _that_ the only thing I’ve got going for me?”

Helen lifts her head, giving Evelyn a playful grin. “No, Ms. Deavor, you have very much proven that’s _not_ the only thing you’ve got going for you. You’ve also got these.” She reaches up, idly brushing her index and middle fingers over Evelyn’s lips; Evelyn’s breath catches in her throat. She pulls herself up so that she’s hovering over Evelyn. “And this,” she murmurs before lowering herself into Evelyn and kissing her hard, making it very clear that it’s her tongue Helen is talking about. She knows Helen can taste herself on Evelyn’s mouth, and that makes Evelyn feel quite smug indeed.

The kiss breaks and they just look at each other for a moment, before Helen sighs and settles back down into Evelyn’s side, her head once again resting on the inventor’s bony chest.

“Look…” Evelyn is extremely hesitant to ruin this moment, because the feeling of Helen’s soft warmth against her is all she ever wanted and something she never thought she’d have, but this is a question that requires asking. “Are you sure your husband isn’t gonna break down my door and murder me for sleeping with his wife?”

Helen sleepily shakes her head, her hair brushing pleasantly against Evelyn’s skin. “Mmm-mmm. It’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, well.” Her hand reaches up to idly play with Helen’s hair, except it’s not idle at all, it’s deliberate and it’s delicious. She twists a strand around her finger, untwists it, twists it again, admiring the auburn shade. “I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”

“He’s probably wondering where I am, though. I didn’t exactly plan for an overnight visit.”

“Won’t he be worried?”

“We’re both adults. He knows I can take care of myself.”

She lightly trails the tips of her fingers over the super’s soft ribcage. “What’re you gonna tell him when you get home?”

“The truth,” she says simply. “Bob and I don’t have any secrets from each other.”

“ _Any_ secrets? That doesn’t sound healthy. Or fun.” Internally, she’s bristling at the idea of Mr. Incredible being involved with this, in any capacity.

Helen chuckles. “Yeah, well, we’ve learned our lessons. By which I mean, Bob learned his lesson. About keeping secrets from me, I mean. And if he’s going to be totally honest with me, I have to reciprocate. It’s just fair.”

“Hmm. So I can’t just be your…” Her fingers distractedly begin playing with the hero’s pink nipple. Lightly stretching it. Teasing it. “…dirty little secret?”

She hears Helen’s breath catch and smiles smugly. The heroine doesn’t waver. “No. No secrets. That’s how you ruin a marriage.”

“But being with me _isn’t_ going to ruin your marriage,” she points out dryly, highlighting the ridiculousness of it all.

Helen looks up at her. Totally unguarded, with red hair a frizzy mess around her face and wide chocolate eyes, she’s a fucking dream. “Being with you?”

“Yeah, I mean…” Evelyn trails off. “Did I misunderstand what’s going on here?”

Helen rolls away and props herself up on one elbow, regarding the inventor with a sad expression. “Evelyn, this was never going to be a… thing between us.”

“Oh. So it was just for tonight.” She keeps all affect from her voice. It’s not as though she wasn’t expecting something like this. After all, it was too good to be true. She’s just lucky it even happened this _once_.

“I’m sorry, but yeah. That’s how it is,” says Helen, shrugging one shoulder. If Evelyn was optimistic, she might interpret the look in Helen’s eyes as one of regret.

“Is that another rule between you and your husband? Only one-night stands, no side chicks?” she asks, keeping her voice flat and emotionless.

“No,” admits Helen, who won’t meet the inventor’s gaze, now. “I just… I don’t think I could…”

“What?” she asks, sounding pleasant enough, but her soft voice clearly masks a coiled viper within. And Helen knows it.

“Look, this was… Jesus, I wish I could explain it,” Helen snaps at herself, exasperated. “This was catharsis. I was expunging something I’d wanted, something I know I can never have in the long run. I thought you were doing the same.”

“You slept with me to _expunge_ me. That’s romantic.”

“This was never about romance, and I think you know that. This was about attraction.”

“Huh,” says Evelyn. She’s bitterly disappointed, and also feeling foolish, because really, what the hell was she expecting? That this would _become_ something?

“Look, sweetie…” Helen pulls herself closer until she’s a hair’s breadth away, and they’re mingling breath. “I don’t want to hurt you. Not any more than you’ve already been hurt. But think about it. If this thing became a relationship—what could that ever _be_ for us?”

Evelyn exhales, knowing that her breath is hot on the redhead’s skin. “Not much,” she admits. “There are a lot of roadblocks, aren’t there, Elastigirl. But hey. It was okay for one night, huh?”

“It was _spectacular_ for one night,” Helen quietly chuckles, leaning her head into the crook of Evelyn’s neck.

The inventor’s voice is muffled against Elastigirl’s red hair when she says, “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Huh?” Elastigirl lifts her head, frowns at Evelyn.

“I know this will never be, y’know, a romantic thing. Hell, I know you’ll probably never even come to see me again. But there’s something I’ve been wondering, and please, just answer it. Honestly. Can you forgive me for the things I’ve done?” The rest of the words come out in a foolish rush. “Because I know you have ample cause to hate me, and I know I’ve done some awful shit, but at the same time—you don’t make love to somebody you hate, not like _that_. So. Here’s my question. Will you ever forgive me?” Her eyes search Elastigirl’s. “Have you forgiven me now?”

Helen is quiet for several moments, her lips pressed into a thin white line, and Evelyn is afraid she’s offended the hero. But Helen doesn’t move away, and eventually, she looks Evelyn in the eye. “You know how they have that saying—forgive but not forget?”

A lump chokes her throat. “Yeah…”

“Well.” Helen reaches up and softly strokes her cheek, wryly smiling at her. It’s the gentlest touch she’s delivered all night. “I think I’m the opposite. I can’t forgive, Evelyn. But, at least for a little while, I can forget.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one's short. I just felt that was the place where I should naturally end this chapter.


	11. How we kissed and killed each other

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ANGST!

She knows it’s pretty stupid, but the only thing the Deavor sister wants is for this, what’s happening right now, to be real.

There’s a pervasive nonreality, even a hyperreality, about Helen’s body weight against her, Helen’s warmth, the slow and even hiss of her breath, the knowledge that she’s fast asleep and dreaming, probably about her husband or kids. It’s early in the morning and Evelyn’s drunkenness is beginning to wear off, leaving only a hollowness and a headache and the sudden ability to clearly contemplate all that’s happened.

Helen telling her: she can forget, for a time, but never forgive.                                            

Well, that’s understandable. Helen can forget everything Evelyn did for long enough to enjoy a good fucking session with her, but she’ll never forgive her for being the Screenslaver, for threatening her kids’ lives. It’s totally reasonable. And it’s probably fair, too, in Helen’s mind. After all, she’s throwing Evelyn a serious bone, one that Evelyn definitely doesn’t deserve.

Evelyn feels intense, hot resentment that Helen is fucking with her like this. Literally _and_ figuratively. Using her body for _closure_. But she also feels ridiculous and stupid for feeling said resentment. What does she have to _resent_ about Helen? She’s lucky Helen hasn’t murdered her already tonight. Evelyn’s actions, apology or no, are damn well unforgivable.

This situation is untenable, too complex to contemplate, so that Evelyn desperately wants to get up from the bed and retrieve her trusty bottle of Chardonnay. Dull the pain, the confusion. Maybe the drink will make everything go away. Maybe she’ll fall asleep from the alcohol and, when she awakens, Elastigirl will be gone. And Evelyn can just pretend it was all a hazy dream and never think about it again.

At least, until Winston casually brings up Helen’s visit sometime in the future and rips open the wound afresh.

She can’t stand not being drunk anymore, so she carefully and gently pushes Helen away. The heroine is a deep sleeper and flops away from Evelyn easily, resting on the bed, tangled in the sheets with her eyes shut tight and her mouth open slightly. Her fists clench and she curls in on herself, missing Evelyn’s warmth in her sleep.

It’s… Christ. She’s not sentimental, never has been, but Helen coaxes out her mushy side. She feels something soft awaken in her, and smiles slightly, unable to look away from Helen’s soft and peaceful face. Clearly Elastigirl isn’t having nightmares at the moment.  

She wants this forever.

She can’t _have_ this forever, and curses herself, falling back against her pillow and rolling her eyes at her own stupidity.

Moments later, she rises from the bed, padding out of the room in only her underwear and an oversized white pyjama top. The apartment is the type of dim and quiet that you only find during the early morning. She estimates it’s probably five or five-thirty. She didn’t sleep a wink last night, only watched Helen do so. She’s honestly flummoxed that Helen can sleep alongside _her_. Sleep implies trust. Does Helen trust her? Does Helen simply think she’s too damn pathetic to be afraid of?

She finds a bottle of Chardonnay on the small table beside the couch, and sinks down onto the sofa while she grasps it around the neck, instantly taking it to her mouth. There’s no lid on the thing, and thank god for that. The buttery, tropical, cold liquid fills her mouth and glides down her throat, and she takes several gulps before she becomes aware of a _presence_ nearby, through some sixth sense. She takes one last gulp, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, and then glances over at Helen, who’s standing close by, with arms crossed.

“Let me guess. An intervention,” she says. She simply doesn’t have the energy to insert any emotion into her tone: dryness, anger, annoyance, even nonchalance. Her voice emerges as flat and lifeless.

Helen stares hard at her. She’s wearing a pair of Evelyn’s black silk pyjamas, and the inventor can just imagine what that would feel like under the palm of her hand. But she tries her best _not_ to imagine.

“Look,” she finally says, unnerved by Helen’s silence and her cold stare. “You’re acting like this is a personal slight against you. Me drinking.”

“I’m not _acting_ like anything.”

“I mean, yeah, you are. Your eyes speak volumes, my love.” She takes another swig just to piss Helen off. Sudden anger has flared in her. Anger that Helen would judge her. “Did you think your flexible tongue had cured me of my need for alcohol, or something? ’Cos that’s cute.”

“No. My tongue doesn’t have such powers,” Helen says dryly. “I’m just disappointed. Not surprised, but disappointed.”

“You have no fucking cause to be disappointed in me,” she snaps. “I’m not one of your damn kids. I can do what I want. Drink what I want.”

Quicker than a blink, Helen’s arm has stretched through the space between them. Her hand grasps the bottle and snatches it from Evelyn’s grasp before she even has time to think.

“I’m cutting you off,” says the heroine.

She indignantly stammers for a moment. “No, you’re not. This is my house.”

“Do you even _know_ how much you drank last night?”

“You drank at least as much,” Evelyn scoffs.

“Well. We both know _that’s_ not true.”

“I drink,” Evelyn says, “to make the pain go away. Why the hell do you think I’m drinking? You’re using me. And I let you. I fucking let you.”

“Using you?” Helen actually sounds incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

Evelyn snorts loudly, leaning back on the couch in a casual careless manner, one arm extended along the back, the other resting on the arm of the couch, her legs crossed as though she doesn’t give a shit. “So, you meet the sister of the crazy PR guy who wants to make your kind legal again. There’s attraction, you’re both into each other, but surprise, she’s fucking crazy, she tries to kill your kids, you kick her ass and send her to jail, yada yada yada, but you can’t get that attraction out of your head, that burn between your legs, even though you know you’re supposed to hate her. So you come to her house for closure, and you fuck her to get her out of your system. And then you’re gone. But what happens to _her?_ What happens when you come into her life like a ghost and then leave just as quickly? What happens when she feels fucking guilty for trying to kill you, but you give her false hope that you don’t hate her, that you could love her, even?”

“I never gave you false hope. I made my intentions clear,” says Helen through clenched teeth, and Evelyn can tell she’s getting to the super. Good.

“Yeah. Clear as mud. Give me back my fucking Chardonnay and leave.”

 “Evelyn. I don’t want to hurt you. I shouldn’t have done what I did.”

“Done _me_ , you mean?”

“Yeah. I shouldn’t have done you. Is that what you want me to say? I made a mistake. I hurt us both, trust me. I—I just saw you standing there talking about how you wanted me, you wanted a future with me, you wished you were married to me instead of Bob, and I just felt—I just felt so _warm_ towards you, and I suddenly just remembered everything I’d felt for you before I knew who you really were.” She’s scowling, and seems frustrated by her own feelings. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I apologize for having sex with you. It was a mistake. I understand your feelings are hurt.”

The words aren’t doing anything more than piercing Evelyn’s heart even more than it’s already been pieced, and so she reacts with disdain. “Huh, perfect. Your apology fixes everything. You know, if I tell Winston about what you’ve done, he’ll never work with you again.”

Helen blanches, and Evelyn smiles darkly in response. Evidently, the Incredibles are still as dependant as ever on the Deavor fortune and the support of the superhero mega-fan who possesses it.

“Yeah. That’s right. I can tell my baby brother that Helen Parr fucked me when I was drunk and my guard was down. And then told me that sleeping with me was just closure, that she wants nothing to do with me. Seems awful callous, doesn’t it? Maybe Winston will be offended enough to… let’s think… withdraw his support. Break ties with you. You’ll lose access to his PR expertise, his crack team of video guys, his hired lawyers, his connections to people in the entertainment biz, his ability to get you on the talk show circuit, his money… doesn’t sound so sweet, now does it, Helen?”

She’s relishing being mean. Relishing the villain role. Even though being so cruel feels like an acidic ulcer in her stomach.

“What are you trying to bribe me for?” Helen asks, looking angry and confused. “To keep sleeping with you?”

“I want my Chardonnay back, for starters.”

Helen tosses the bottle at her. For a moment Evelyn’s scared it’ll land on the floor and shatter, but it just hits the couch beside her, with a dull thump.

“Ruin yourself, then,” says Helen tightly. “I was just trying to protect you, but you go ahead and keep being drunk if that’s what you want.”

She pulls the bottle toward her. “Yeah. Thanks. It’s what I want.”

“Sure, keep numbing everything. Keep being aloof. Keep acting like you don’t care about anything. Like you’re detached from everything. I know the truth. You act like you feel nothing because it’s easier than being vulnerable, and the drink helps you with that, and you have no idea how much that annoys me, Evelyn Deavor, because the reason I slept with you last night wasn’t because I was _horny_ , it was because I saw the woman who’s hiding in there, afraid to come out, and for god’s sake—I wish I could’ve known her for longer, because she’s someone I would have been glad to spend the rest of my life with. But you just keep burying her, because you’re terrified of letting anyone see you without your mask on. And that’s the reason this entire goddamn thing happened in the first place. Because you couldn’t be vulnerable. You couldn’t deal with your parents’ deaths by actually talking to someone about it. Instead you retreated inside yourself. Huh? I’m not wrong, am I?” The words seem like angry words, but Helen is more desperately sad than angry. Evelyn even thinks she sees tears prickling on the edges of the super’s brown eyes. “That’s why I want you to stop drinking, Evelyn. Not because I’m babying you, trying to control you. Because I want to see you stop numbing yourself. And live again.”

The speech hits home, in more ways than one. Evelyn has a sarcastic, biting reply prepared. But she finds that she just can’t say it. Instead she mumbles, “Y’know, if I wasn’t drunk, I never would’ve said all that stuff I said to you.”

“Recovery starts with giving up your vices,” Helen says, gently but tiredly. “If it takes alcohol to be vulnerable, if you can only speak your mind when you get roaring drunk, then that’s no life, is it?”

“You fucked a roaring drunk. How does that feel?” There’s no fury behind her words, just hollowness.

“I was just as drunk,” Helen admits with a small laugh, approaching the couch and sitting down beside her, a respectable distance away.

“So. You started last night wanting to fuck me and then never see me again. Now you want to save me?” she says bleakly.

“I save people. I’m a super. It’s what I do.”

“Even villains?”

“Even villains.”

Evelyn exhales, unsure of what purpose it serves. She feels too tired to fight anything anymore, too tired to be angry. And Helen is right. She’s right about everything. As usual.

“Y’know, I was starving myself,” she says conversationally. “For a reason, not just to die. If I managed to jimmy the lock on the door somehow, there’s only a metal-barred door behind it. I could squeeze through the bars if I was slim enough.”

“Ever try it?” the hero asks quietly, unjudgementally.

“Nah. Not yet.”

The words hang the possibility of escape in the air, but Helen doesn’t confront it. “You sure you weren’t starving yourself as a form of punishment?” she asks—again, totally without judgement, with an uncommon gentleness.

“Eh. That too.” She rolls her eyes toward the ceiling so she doesn’t have to look at Helen.

“Why are you telling me this?”

_Because I want to tell you everything. Because I don’t want to be closed-off anymore._

“Because, if you manage to slip under the door with those nifty elastic powers of yours, you won’t _need_ to starve yourself to fit through the bars. You can just… go. So why don’t you?”

“I should.”

“So. Why don’t you?” she repeats.

“I don’t know,” Helen says quietly. “Do you want me to?”

“Yes. No. Jesus, I don’t fucking know anything. I don’t know what I want. I want things to be different. I want to go back and… and…”

She usually only cries when she’s really drunk, but right now, the alcohol has worn off and she’s totally sober, yet she can’t stop the stupid tears from slipping out of her eyes. Defiantly she wipes them away with the back of her hand. She’s not even _that_ sad. Is she?

“I want to go back,” she says, as clearly as she can manage, because Helen’s fucking right, she _can’t_ be vulnerable, not unless she’s drunk or she forces herself, and she wants to prove it wrong. “I want to go back to the day my dad died. I want to meet that Evelyn and shake her like the fucking idiot she is, and tell her to fucking talk to somebody about it. Tell her it’s nobody’s fault. Not superheroes’ fault, not society’s fault, not even her own fault. Don’t shut yourself up in your damn workroom, don’t become this cold, calculating, scheming bitch who manipulates everybody she meets and doesn’t care about anybody. Don’t waste your life. Don’t hurt people to retaliate for your own hurt. Don’t let the pain rot your core. Love and be loved. Be a _real fucking human being_.” In the years since her parents died she has only cried a handful of times. Now she’s sobbing, not in grief but in fury, her voice muffled because her head’s buried in her hands. “And when you meet Helen Parr…”

She can’t finish her sentence, because she doesn’t know _what_ she would tell younger Evelyn about what to do when she meets Elastigirl. Don’t hurt her, maybe?

When she finally works up the courage to look at Helen again, and can’t read the conflicted mix of emotions she sees in the woman’s face.

“Come here,” is all the super says, and reaches over and puts her arm around the inventor’s shoulders. She allows the super to pull her down, rest her head on Helen’s lap, and lie there staring at nothing until a ringing drowns her ears and she can pretend nothing exists.


	12. Go astray with me

Well, to say the least, it’s been an odd night.

Helen’s moods seem to come and go, and Evelyn has no damn clue what the red-haired heroine actually _thinks_ of her. There’s affection, there’s anger and hatred, there’s pity. Which one is dominant? Hell, maybe none of them are. Maybe her feelings are too complex to be sorted through. Maybe she needs more time.

In a way, the inventor does sort of feel like she’s being played with. Helen’s made her intentions clear. She came here to purge something. And she’ll probably never come back again. Evelyn doesn’t blame her. The penthouse isn’t exactly a pleasant place, and it doesn’t exactly house a pleasant woman.

She toys with the idea of asking Helen outright what she feels about her, but decides she probably wouldn’t like the answer.

Sleeping with Elastigirl was—to say the least—pretty nice. But all in all, Evelyn wishes the superhero had never showed up at her door. She brings more pain and bewilderment than she’s worth.

Actually, no. That isn’t true. She _is_ worth it.

It just hurts so goddamn much.

 

“Y’know, you could leave anytime you want,” she says conversationally.

It’s probably eight in the morning and they are sitting on opposite ends of the sofa; the intimacy they shared earlier is gone, but still on their minds, leaving Evelyn wary and awkward. The Deavor sister has decided to obey Helen’s request that she not drink any more. It’s probably the best thing for her, anyhow.

Helen sighs and said, “Hmm. I know.”

The billionaire props her head up on her fist, her elbow digging into the arm of the sofa. Her legs are tucked under her, and they’re starting to fall asleep, prickles running up her calves, but she doesn’t feel like shifting. “Then why don’t you? Don’t your husband and kids need you back home? Don’t you have a _life?_ ”

“Yes, Evelyn, I have a _life_. It’s just that I’m pretty sure leaving without using the key would be breaking the law. In some weird roundabout way.”

“Now that’s a lame excuse,” she proclaims. And it is. It really is. “For real, Helen. Your family needs you more than I do. You better go.”

Her own feelings are far too complex to comprehend, but she knows she she’s trying to drive Helen away because the pain of her presence is greater than the pain of her absence. But only by the tiniest of threads.

“You know,” says Helen with uncommon gentleness, “sometimes, I don’t think that’s true.”

“Huh?”

“I mean,” she explains, shrugging and making wide gestures with her hands, “my kids are well-adjusted, Bob’s got things on lock, but you… you’re not doing so great. That’s one thing I’ve found out tonight.”

“So what?” the inventor scoffs, unable to avoid reverting back to her old ways. “You’re gonna save me?”

“I just don’t want to leave you,” Helen admits. “I’m worried about you.”

“You know, I can’t fucking figure you out.” Despite the harsh curse, there’s no anger behind her words, just genuine confusion. “You say you’re worried about me, but hey, it’s not that long ago that I was legitimately worried you might _kill_ me. So what’s the truth?”

“I’m not gonna kill you, Evelyn. I just… I don’t know what to think. You did some terrible things. Villainous things. But in the end, nobody was hurt, everyone survived, and you regret what you did, and you only did what you did because you are a fundamentally damaged, _prideful_ human being who never got the help she needs.”

“Just what every girl wants to hear,” she says, deadpan.

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are. Are you even capable of being anything less than totally earnest?”

“Nah,” says the heroine with a smile. “I say what I mean.”

“I know you do. It’s one of your best qualities.” There is genuine affection in her words, and she knows Helen can sense it.

Helen abruptly changes the subject. “If you were to get out of here, right now, released with no strings attached, what would you do? Where would you go?”

Odd question. “Mmm, I guess it depends. Do I have access to my outrageous fortune?”

“Hypothetically, yes.”

“Okay.” She has to think about it for a minute, and briefly toys with the idea of giving Helen a fake answer, but decides that honesty is the best policy. Helen thinks she can’t be vulnerable, and goddammit, she’s gonna prove her wrong.

 “I’d have to leave North America. Everyone here knows my name and face. _Evelyn Deavor: billionaire, genius, attempted terrorist and murderer_. Not exactly the most flattering public profile. I bet Winston could fix me up, launch a campaign to get everyone to like me again, or hell, at least _forget_ about me. But I don’t wanna go through that. So. No more North America. I’d go somewhere where the natives never even heard the Deavor name.” She smirks and shakes her head. “I’d have to move to Antarctica.”

“Lord knows you have the funds for it,” jokes Helen, but her face is troubled. “You’d really leave Winston, though? Just like that?”

Of course she wouldn’t. It’s just a pipe dream.

“No,” she says. “I wouldn’t leave him. I can’t leave him. What more do I even have? I don’t know _what_ I would do. When I get out of here… I don’t know what I _will_ do. This is something I’ve thought about extensively, Helen. I feel like there’s no future for me.”

“There you go again, proving that I _should_ be worried about you,” says Helen, wearing an expression of honest concern. “Don’t say things like that. You have a future.”

“Where?” she laughs humorlessly, feeling the phantom form of a wineglass in her hand. “Show it to me.”

“Hmm. Well, if you behave yourself, the house arrest will end in two years, or probably less. And you’ll be sentenced to community service. Right? Isn’t that what the judge said?”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I’ll talk to Winston, and your lawyer, and I’ll show up in court and argue that you should be sentenced to help supers. For your community service, I mean. You can help repair and maintain hero equipment and tech, or you can design new tech for our use. God knows you’re suited for it.”

She blinks, frowning. “Okay. That’s an oddly specific sentence.”

“Evelyn. I mean you’d be allowed to help me. You’d be around me all the time. I could keep an eye on you, make sure you’re doing okay. And we could work together. Professionally. Like you wanted. Like _I_ wanted,” she admits with a short laugh.

Evelyn blinks yet again. This time in surprise instead of confusion. “You… you want that? You’d do that for me?”

“Look, I just think it would be cathartic for you. You obviously regret everything you did to harm supers, so why not spend the rest of your sentence helping them? Does that sound okay?”

There’s something so liberatingly full-circle about it. She’s spent almost four decades despising superheroes and everything about them. Now, to be given the opportunity, however tenuous, to rebuild trust by helping them? To have fallen in love with one? It’s almost too weird to be believed. If you’d told the Evelyn of a year ago that this would be how things ended up, she would’ve laughed in your face.

But to her surprise, when she thinks about the idea, it feels good. Not even merely neutral. _Good_.

Instead of answering Helen’s questions, she switches gears. “I don’t get you,” she says, echoing her words from earlier. “You should hate me. You should hate every inch of my guts and wish death and agony upon me. Instead you want to _work_ with me?”

“Haven’t I said it enough times?” says Helen softly. “I can’t hate you. I look at you and I just can’t. After tonight I… I can’t even dislike you. There’s still some negative emotions there, and it’s gonna be a learning curve. But I really feel like you deserve a second chance. I want to help give you that second chance. I want _so_ badly to see you get better.”

The raw honesty in the words is like being punched in the gut, but Evelyn, back in her old habits, tries her best not to show it. “Huh,” she says instead.

Helen reaches across the couch, puts a warm hand on her shoulder. “So. What do you say? Does that sound good to you, Ms. Deavor?”

She wants to make a sarcastic comment. But she just can’t.

“Yeah,” she says instead, matching Helen’s honesty. “That sounds really good.”

Her responding smile is bright and beautiful. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Evelyn thinks back to Helen’s questions, the ones she apparently came over here to ask. The first question: _How did you end up hating supers after growing up in a family that loved them?_ The second: _Why were you nice to me if you planned on killing me all along?_ The third: _What were you planning to do with my kids in the interim?_ The fourth, astonishingly: _Will you work with me in the future?_

She wonders if there’s a fifth question. God, she hopes not. There’s been enough questions around here to last a decade.

She feels disgustingly warm. Just, _good_ , and happy. Or, at least, as good and happy as she can get, nowadays. That’s Helen’s effect.

Suddenly, she doesn’t want Helen to leave anymore.

The question blurts from her lips, like an awkward idiot teenager, before she can stop it. “So, if we work together in the future. You think Bob is still gonna give you that free pass?”

Helen doesn’t answer for a few long seconds, and the inventor is transfixed to the spot, terrified that she has offended the heroine and ruined everything. But she hasn’t. Helen finally speaks. “Baby steps. Let’s be friends first.”

“Good thinking,” she says with a relieved laugh. It’s insane that Elastigirl even wants to be her friend. After everything.

Helen says, “I have a few conditions. If I’m going to talk to Winston and your lawyers about this, I’m gonna need something in return.”

“What do you want?”

“You to stop drinking,” Helen says bluntly, “and start eating properly again. Can you do that for me?”

“You’re not my mom,” she mutters, but without venom. Warmth spreads through her chest by just knowing that Helen gives a shit.

“Alright, nobody’s gonna force you.”

“I will,” she says. “For you, I’ll throw away every single bottle. It’ll be a bad time, but I’ll power through it.” She can already taste the bitter tang of detox on her tongue. “And I’ll start eating like a pig. The next time you see me, I’ll weigh two hundred pounds.”

“Easy, girl, you don’t have to go _that_ far.”

She scoots just the tiniest bit closer to Helen, not wanting to give away that she feels like a cat attracted to a sunbeam. “But I want to.”

To her immense surprise, Helen moves toward her with the comforting rustling sound of shifting fabric, and she almost thinks the hero is about to fuck her again, which would not be a bad thing, but instead Helen enfolds her in a tight hug, the point of her chin digging into the inventor’s shoulder and her fingers digging into Evelyn’s back. She doesn’t say anything, and Evelyn gives up waiting for her to speak. She returns the hug, awkwardly at first, then just as tight. To her disgust, she feels tears pooling at the edges of her eyes when she says, “Thanks. Y’know, for not killing me.” And for everything else that remains unspoken.

“Hey,” murmurs Helen, her voice warm like honey next to Evelyn’s ear, “it’s what I do.”

 

It’s not too long before they hear the key at the door, and the sounds of someone bustling inside coming from the front entrance. “Evelyn!” calls Winston, frantic with worry. “Helen!”

Within moments, her brother—wearing only a T-shirt and jeans, so she knows he woke up five minutes ago in a panic, having realized his mistake—bursts into the living room. He practically sags with relief to see the two women sitting peacefully on the couch. “Oh, good, you’re both fine. I really have to apologize for this. I’m such a dunderhead. I forgot the key!” He sheepishly waves the key in the air with a nervous laugh. “Helen, can you ever forgive me?”

“Eh, I think I’ll come around,” Helen jokes with a smile.

“Come on, Winston, be nice. Being locked in with me all night isn’t _that_ miserable,” Evelyn says, acting as though she’s grievously wounded.

“No, of course not. You’re a delight. But really, Helen, I _am_ sorry. You’ll probably want to get home to Mr. Incredible and the kids, huh?”

Helen rises gracefully from her seat on the couch. “Yeah, I think it’s about time I went home. But Winston, when you’ve got a free moment, can we talk about something? Spending the night with Evelyn gave me a pretty good idea about her community service. That is, if you’re up for hearing an idea.”

“Of course I’m up for it!” he exclaims, smiling. “That sounds great! Ev, you like this idea?”

“Uh-huh,” she said. She offers Helen a toothy smile. “I look forward to it.”

 

She sees her guests to the door at 8:34 am.

Winston leaves in a hurry—“I’ve got a meeting with some investors”—after hugging Evelyn and shaking Helen’s hand. The two women are left alone in Evelyn’s doorway: Helen outside, Evelyn in. Despite all that has happened, the inventor's still acutely conscious of the fact that she cannot leave, that soon the iron door will shut and Helen will lock it behind her.

Helen does indeed shut the iron door, with a resounding clank that echoes through the empty hallway. She looks at Evelyn through the bars, and the inventor wonders if Helen is sizing her up—literally. Wondering if Evelyn _is_ skinny enough to fit through the bars.

Bracketed by the thick bars, Helen lingers a moment. “Well, ’bye for now,” says the heroine warmly, with a soft smile. Evelyn can't ascertain whether the warmth is fake or not, and that scares her. She chooses to believe it's real, though. Because Helen is not a fake person. And also because that's easiest.

She wants to reach through the bars and enfold Helen in yet another embrace. She doesn't, though. She just stands there, and clumsily says, “Yeah, see ya later.”

Just as Helen's retreating, Evelyn stops her with a question of her own.

“Hey. Elastigirl. You get your closure?”

Helen pauses and turns back around for just a moment, but doesn't reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end. Thanks for slogging through yet another mediocre house-arrest Hevelyn fic. In all seriousness, I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
